On analysing sustainability assessment in manufacturing organisations: a survey

This work was supported by the Ministry of Education, University and Research (Italy) under the Programme ‘Department of Excellence’ Legge 232/2016 [grant number CUP – D94I18000260001].

Manufacturing organizations are now facing unexpected challenges due to scarcity of the natural resources and consequent governmental rules that urge to adopt new organisational or even manufacturing strategies. Adopting the sustainability paradigm at the present seems to be the only viable strategy to respond appropriately to this changed market conditions and customer’s demand. As the pressure for changing the traditional manufacturing approach to reach a sustainable operating condition increases, the urge for assessing their sustainability performance has been reinforced accordingly. Various methods have been accomplished so far, trying to find a way to assess the sustainability state of companies, to select among sustainable solutions, to define and to solve practical problems and to identify potential sustainable solutions. Due to this abundance, the present study is cantered by a systematic literature review based on sustainable manufacturing and sustainability assessment to explore questions on sustainable manufacturing: ‘How can sustainable manufacturing be achieved?’ and ‘How can sustainable manufacturing be assessed?’ The study led to stipulation of the true essence of sustainable manufacturing and sustainability assessment. It also brought new hints on the sustainability assessment of manufacturing recognising true gaps needed to be filled. Furthermore, to investigate the regularity of the methods and tools of sustainability assessment, a Formal Concept Analysis (FCA) was adopted. At the end, a new holistic framework for sustainability assessment in a manufacturing organization is proposed.