Investigation of the Industry 4.0 Technologies Adoption Effect on Circular Economy

Abstract

Industry 4.0 technologies’ adoption became a reality in manufacturing and other industrial companies. The effects of this adoption on several areas including the Circular Economy are interesting in the research field. Deep research and investigation of various Industry 4.0 technologies’ relationships with the Circular Economy are presented in this article. The investigation is based on collected data from 798 companies in five countries, Lithuania, Slovakia, Austria, Croatia, and Slovenia as part of the European Manufacturing Survey project in 2018. After filtering the data, groups’ comparison is used to form potential prospective relationships in connection with the presented literature. A logistics regression test is used by SPSS software to validate the hypotheses and potential relations. Based on the achieved results, it seems that both Industry 4.0 and non-Industry 4.0 technologies can have significant relations with Circular Economy technologies, so they can be potentially influenced or enhanced by both. Similarly, an investigation of the relations between the development of products with improved environmental impact and the use of Industry 4.0 technologies showed no clear dominance of Industry 4.0 technologies over non-Industry 4.0. Finally, there are two of the twelve investigated technologies that have a significant relationship (potential impact) on both the Circular Economy technologies and product development with improved environmental impact.