Building manufacturing resilience for sustainability - a dynamic capabilities perspective

Doctoral thesis, 2024

In the contemporary Industry 4.0 era, manufacturing companies are faced with a simultaneous transition towards digital and sustainable transformations. Furthermore, many organisations have prioritised ‘resilience’ as part of their transformation agendas due to complexities resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic. Digitalisation, sustainability, and resilience thus form a ‘triptych’ in the manufacturing sector. This confluence includes multifaceted dimensions that are challenging for manufacturing organisations and their associated value chains to fully understand and operationalise. Thus, it is necessary to understand these complexities to exploit the related benefits and successfully address the pressing sustainability concerns currently faced by manufacturing companies. This thesis aims to provide manufacturing companies with concrete mechanisms to strengthen their resilience and understand its implications for sustainability. With this aim, and with sustainability as the key driver of building manufacturing resilience, the thesis focuses on: (1) conceptualising resilience and sustainability in the manufacturing context; (2) identifying enablers of manufacturing resilience for sustainability; and (3) developing assessment methods to build manufacturing resilience that favours sustainability.

Six studies were carried out over the last five years using a multiple-case study design and a mixed-methods approach. Data was triangulated in the form of systematic literature reviews, interviews, workshops and surveys. The thesis derived three main outcomes: (i) the relationships (synergies, conflicts and underlying concepts) between resilience and sustainability in manufacturing (conceptualisation); (ii) key enabling factors for building manufacturing resilience [risk management, dynamic capabilities that need to be developed in a stage-wise temporal manner for resilience (anticipation, coping and adaptation phases), and how digitalisation in Industry 4.0 can support resilient and sustainable manufacturing]; (iii) an IDEF0 resilience model to structure and visualise the interconnectedness of and interdependencies between the enabling resilience factors. Also, a quantitatively validated measurement instrument – a resilience compass – to assess how manufacturing companies should deal with disruptions (operationalisation of resilience).

The theoretical contribution of this research is that it advances knowledge at the convergence of resilience engineering, dynamic capabilities and sustainability fields, especially in the smart manufacturing context. Practitioners can leverage the IDEF0 resilience model and the resilience compass to gain a comprehensive and systemic understanding of the various essential factors and capabilities across the temporal stages of resilience. This facilitates the formulation of tailored strategies to effectively address risks and disruptions and, ultimately, bolsters the resilience of both manufacturing operations and their value chains.