Innovation in the Pursuit of Sustainable Manufacturing

The deployment of innovative solutions in enterprises is a key contributor to sustainability in a production environment. Amidst other members of the European Union, Poland comes across as a poor innovator. In a 2020 ranking, the country came in the 24^th place, close to the bottom of the listing. The authors outline a range of aspects of new technology deployments in production with a focus on the ceramic sanitaryware industry. Due to the sector’s high barriers to entry, additional problems may be encountered in adopting innovation and seeking to achieve sustainable production. In their paper, the authors present the cost of deploying and using an automated high-pressure casting process with specific costing figures expressed as a percentage of the costs of using the existing low-pressure-casting technology. By comparative analysis, they identify the parts of the new solution that will add extra costs. To offset such cost increases, a number of other aspects of the proposed solution (expected return on investment, improvements in working conditions, etc.) are also presented. Finally, recommendations are offered for further studies and final roll-outs of innovative solutions in manufacturing.