A systematic literature review of integration of industry 4.0 and warehouse management to achieve Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

Warehouse management will be the focus of this article, which aims to examine the benefits and issues & challenges of using Industry 4.0 technologies to achieve Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by the United Nations (UN). We conducted a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) evaluation of the published literature from credible peer-reviewed journals in the major databases Scopus and Web of Science. The analysis of literature will be a frequency analysis of the literature by considering the year of publications, the contribution of leading journals and publishers, and the methodology adopted and the content analysis of literature to get the benefits, issues & challenges of the implementation of industry 4.0 on warehouses in accordance to SDGs that were identified from the literature. Industry 4.0 research on logistics and supply chain management, as well as warehouse management, showed a significant increase in research papers in the past two years. But, the study on industry 4.0 in warehousing toward SDGs is still in its early stages, with just a few articles contributing to sustainable practices. Our findings from the literature reveal that the major benefits of implementing industry 4.0 in warehouse management as per SDGs are “SDG – 2 (Zero Hunger)”, “SDG – 4 (Quality Education)”, “SDG – 7 (Affordable and Clean Energy)”, “SDG − 9 (Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure)”, “SDG – 12 (Ensure Sustainable Consumption and Production Patterns)”, and “SDG – 13 (Climate Action)”. Lack of government support, legal issues, lack of skilled manpower, political issues, and old/traditional warehouses are the major issues & challenges of industry 4.0 in warehouses to avert the deed of achieving SDGs in developing countries. This study is one of those that apply industry 4.0 in the context of warehouse management, thus it will reveal insights and implications for future research.