Manufacturing organizations face intertemporal choice problem, i.e., falling victim to pursuing short-term financial objectives or pursuing long-term environmental protection and social equity objective. Despite of the need to balance the present with the future, most sustainability research is centred on the tension between business and society, irrespective of time. We argue in this research that principles of Industry 4.0 could contribute to mitigating this intertemporal tension in sustainable manufacturing, moving towards a more sustainable society as well as world-class sustainable manufacturing.