New and Renewed Manufacturing Paradigms for Sustainable Production

Despite the difficulties created by the COVID-19 pandemic, the year 2020 ushered in a decade of ambitious actions aiming to deliver on the promises made in the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. Unfortunately, though progress is being made in many places, such actions are not advancing at the speed and scale required. At the same time, optimism concerning the potential of new manufacturing paradigms such as “Digital Manufacturing” and “Smart Manufacturing” continues to grow—primarily in terms of the economic bottom line, but also with an increasing focus on both the environmental and social bottom lines, such as in the case of the “Circular Manufacturing” paradigm. The promise of digital connectivity, big data analytics, blockchain, cyber-physical systems, and the industrial Internet of Things in these areas remains significant and creates the need for more specific examples of how new and renewed manufacturing paradigms can indeed contribute towards achieving a more sustainable future, particularly with regards to more sustainable production and consumption patterns. As such, in this Special Issue, we present scientific contributions addressing this challenge from various perspectives, providing innovative answers to this multidimensional problem.