A survey on sustainability in manufacturing organisations: dimensions and future insights

Manufacturing organizations are facing the urge to adopt new strategies like sustainability to be able to respond the market and customer’s demand for sustainable products due to scarcity of the natural resources or governmental rules. To serve this purpose, the main questions risen are “what the meaning of sustainable manufacturing is” and “How it can be achieved”. Focusing on the first question, this study is cantered by a systematic literature review based on sustainability, its dimensions and subdimensions to investigate sustainability in manufacturing and the domains on which manufacturers can act on to be more “sustainable”. Although the literature is more focused on the three traditional dimensions of sustainability namely: environmental, economic and social, a more detailed look through the dimensions is needed to help manufacturing organizations sketch their own sustainable strategies on more specific issues. The study of the dimensions and subdimensions of sustainability in manufacturing criteria is followed by a Formal Concept Analysis(FCA) on the subdimensions that have been investigated by authors to explore existing trends for the choice of sustainability concepts by the manufacturers.