Digital hyperconnectivity of supply chains with shop floors for material sustainability

In today’s rapidly changing manufacturing environment, supply chains have gained more importance than ever. Digitally connected supply chains, being of utmost significance, ensure greater transparency, agility and sustainability. During production processes, part quality often deviates due to variations in dimensions and tolerances. This can be because for multiple reasons, the primary concern in this case is operator issues such as negligence, lack of skills, lack of coordination between various operator stations, and most importantly lack of connectivity for information sharing. This paper discusses the role of digital connectivity among supply chains in the current manufacturing sector and further examines the challenges and benefits in implementing these technologies and future research directions. By critically analysing the current state of the art, the paper then proposes a solution for digital hyperconnectivity of supply chains for micro-SMEs. This is done by utilising digital technologies for quality inspection at shop floors and streamline inventory management operations in micro-SMEs. In this advanced era, material resources are crucial and wastage of the same along with energy consumption during manufacturing processes lead to loss of time, money and resources and constitute adverse sustainability. Digital hyperconnectivity as proposed in this paper will lead to smart shop floors, low wastage, increased profits, streamlined inventory management and above all greater sustainability for materials and energy consumption. Furthermore, using this integrated approach is expected to lower part rejection rates, minimize waste and increase overall production efficiency. By enabling automated quality inspection and data-driven interventions, the system promotes more sustainable manufacturing practices and delivers clear, tangible benefits for micro-SMEs.