Industrial Symbiosis and Industry 4.0: Literature Review and Research Steps Toward Sustainability

The recognition of Industry 4.0 (I4.0) technologies as enablers of Circular Economy (CE) is a debated topic throughout the last decade. Material flows and operations within circular cross-industry networks require information sharing platforms and supporting digital tools to improve resource optimisation and to aim at CE principles. As a branch of CE, Industrial Symbiosis (IS) connects traditionally separated entities for sharing and exchanging by-products, energy, information and know-how. Practical implementations of IS are still limited. Several factors currently hamper the implementation of IS exchanges, i.e., technical, managerial, legislative, social, and I4.0 technologies, especially sensors, IoT and data analytics, can contribute to address them. However, in current literature few studies explore this promising tandem. According to this vision, this paper presents an updated review of the literature about the concepts of “Industry 4.0” and “Industrial Symbiosis”, focusing, firstly, on the analysis of the authors keywords, and then, on the identification of methods and applications used. Finally, potential areas of interest for future agendas of researchers and practitioners in this field are proposed.