Industry 4.0 and Life Cycle Assessment: evaluation of the technology applications as an asset for the Life Cycle Inventory

Technologies involved in Industry 4.0 (I4.0) give a comprehensive view of how companies are organized and let them acquire precise data on production activity. The analysis of these data, together with the development of new digital paradigms, represents an exploitable new focus to make production more efficient, profitable, and sustainable. The potentiality of this comprehensive data collection drives the present research project to evaluate the existing technologies that could integrate with the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). Specifically, the present work is focused on seeking to fill the literature gap underlining what are the technologies in manufacturing business processes of I4.0 that enable the LCA.