Technologies of Industry 4.0 for the next fashion revolution: A systematic literature review

Fashion industry has undergone significant changes over time due to the variations on perception, exigencies, and activities of customers around the world. Because of the fluctuating and increasing demand, one of the main concerns of fashion-related activities is pollution, particularly water and air pollution. To that, some technologies from industry 4.0 technologies could be useful for mitigating the negative environmental impact in the fashion industry. Based on this challenge, the article aims to identify the most relevant technological applications of Industry 4.0 to enhance sustainability in production and service processes. To achieve this, two methodologies (PICOC and PRISMA) were used to search and select articles for the research. Through inclusion and exclusion criteria, thirty open-access articles from the Scopus database were chosen. Nowadays, it is known that fashion industry activities represent approximately 8% to 10% of global carbon emissions contributes to industrial wastewater pollution (20%), and generates substantial amounts of waste of materials and energy. Hence, there are various Industry 4.0 technologies that can be combined to improve sustainability in different processes within the fashion industry (textile manufacturing, supply chain management, store management, user experience). After the analysis, it was concluded that technologies such as virtual reality, digital twins, and artificial intelligence, belonging to Industry 4.0, offer a potential solution to mitigate the negative environmental impact of the fashion industry an enrich the customer-business interaction. Further works must explore the benefits and limitations of these technologies, focusing in small and midsize enterprises (SMEs).