Resilience, sustainability and Industry 4.0 in PPC: A survey of german manufacturers
Citation Link: https://doi.org/10.15480/882.18739
Publikationstyp
Journal Article
Date Issued
2026-09-01
Sprache
English
TORE-DOI
Volume
6
Article Number
3
Citation
Journal of Production Systems and Logistics 6: 3 (2026)
Publisher DOI
Publisher
publish-Ing.
Peer Reviewed
true
Manufacturing companies face increasing demands related to supply-chain resilience, sustainability, and digitalisation, creating new requirements for production planning and control (PPC). This paper presents selected findings from the 2024 PPC Report, a recurring survey of German manufacturing companies conducted by four production technology research institutes. Based on 39 completed questionnaires, the study provides a descriptive benchmarking snapshot of resilience, sustainability practices, and Industry 4.0 adoption and complements descriptive results with selected bivariate subgroup comparisons. The findings show that most respondents expect their production systems to be similarly or better positioned for future crises than during past disruptions, while no clear relationship with company size emerges. Respondents reporting the use of risk-management approaches predominantly assess their future resilience as stable or improved. Material and energy efficiency are among the most frequently selected measures for reducing the carbon footprint of production, while the reported composition of energy-data practices differs across company-size groups, with operational uses accounting for larger shares among medium-sized and large companies. Regarding Industry 4.0, advanced integration remains limited: mostly or fully connected OPC UA implementations and Asset Administration Shell adoption are still uncommon. An analysis of software use in commissioning further reveals descriptive differences between implementation approaches. Across the three areas, the findings highlight the growing importance of combining organisational practices, data availability, and system integration within PPC. Given the exploratory design and small sample, the results should be interpreted as a benchmarking snapshot rather than as representative of German manufacturing as a whole.
Subjects
Production Planning and Control
Survey
Resilience
Sustainability
Industry 4.0
Digital Production
DDC Class
620: Engineering
658.5: Of Production
Publication version
publishedVersion