sustainability Article COVID-19 Challenges: Can Industry 4.0 Technologies Help with Business Continuity? Amjad Hussain 1 , Muhammad Umar Farooq 1,2, * , Muhammad Salman Habib 1 , Tariq Masood 3 and Catalin I. Pruncu 3, *   Citation: Hussain, A.; Farooq, M.U.; Habib, M.S.; Masood, T.; Pruncu, C.I. COVID-19 Challenges: Can Industry 4.0 Technologies Help with Business Continuity?. Sustainability 2021, 13, 11971. https://doi.org/10.3390/ su132111971 Academic Editors: Gyu Min Lee and Ivan Kristianto Singgih Received: 9 August 2021 Accepted: 18 October 2021 Published: 29 October 2021 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affil- iations. Copyright: © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). 1 Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering, University of Engineering and Technology, Lahore 54890, Pakistan; chamjad@uet.edu.pk (A.H.); salmanhabib@uet.edu.pk (M.S.H.) 2 School of Mechanical Engineering, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK 3 Department of Design, Manufacturing and Engineering Management, University of Strathclyde, 75 Montrose Street, Glasgow G1 1XJ, UK; tariq.masood@strath.ac.uk * Correspondence: Umarmuf0@gmail.com (M.U.F.); Catalin.pruncu@strath.ac.uk (C.I.P.) Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic has halted economic activities and made business dynamics much more challenging by introducing several additional operational, structural, and managerial constraints. The problem has affected global supply chains in many ways, and has questioned their long-term continuity. On the other hand, Industry 4.0 is an emerging phenomenon. However, there is a need to investigate how Industry 4.0 technologies may play a potential role in sustaining business operations to ease unprecedented causalities. The current research aims to investigate the potentiality of Industry 4.0 technologies to solve the COVID-19 challenges for long term sustainability. From an exploratory literature analysis coupled with the Delphi method, keeping in view the situation of the pandemic, ten challenge groups that have affected global business dynamics were identified. A questionnaire was developed with the aim of accumulating industrial and academic experts to evaluate the degree of influence and interrelationship among the identified challenges. The Decision Making, Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) approach was deployed to further analyze the challenges for the categorization of these into causes and effects, further prioritizing them for better decision making. The prioritized challenges from the list of causes were governmental policies and support, followed by real access to customers and a lack of infrastructure. Additionally, these challenges were further evaluated through the expert opinion of Industry 4.0 systems experts and strategic-level supply chain experts to potentially gauge the potency of Industry 4.0 technologies to solve COVID-19-induced challenges. The outcomes of this research (which used Delphi integrated with a DEMATEL approach) are expected to support businesses in formulating strategies with the aim of business continuity in combating future disruptions caused by COVID-19-like pandemics. Keywords: Industry 4.0; smart manufacturing; COVID-19; business dynamics; business continuity; challenges; DEMATEL 1. Introduction Recently, at the dawn of 2020, the world started to face a significantly huge, unmatched, and unprecedented pandemic, COVID-19. When businesses ranging from the micro to large scale were looking forward to gradual responsiveness and the adoption of novel state-of-the-art technologies to step into the dawn of the most recent industrial revolution, the health crisis caught the world unprepared and affected large communities, business dynamics and economical activities [1]. The dependence of operations on humans revoked the continuity of operations due to human–human transmission of the virus. Similarly, the businesses and people were dealing with new challenges, such as the fear of contagion, remonstrance of quarantine, and unparalleled losses of human lives, as well as the economic perspective. The extraordinary COVID-19 pandemic of recent times has affected several businesses and, in fact, whole supply chains, and has infected more than 76.6 million people, Sustainability 2021, 13, 11971. https://doi.org/10.3390/su132111971 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability