Enablers of Sustainable Manufacturing Overview, Framework and Further Research Directions

2. Literature Review

As a part of systematic literature review, the authors started the review from analyzing the history of manufacturing itself, which helps to give insights into the evolution of sustainable manufacturing. According to Brundtland Commission (1987), the word sustainable implies the use of consistent practices which will ensure zero negative repercussions to the future generations due to the prevailing practices. Davidson et al. (2010) foresee the need to educate future engineers and new generation about sustainable development (SD) practices by including SD workshops and educational materials in their curriculum to meet increasing environmental, resource scarcity and social threats of 21^st century. Miller et al. (2010) show how the theories of sustainable manufacturing help to attain competitive advantage for a small scale industry through waste reduction, supply chain network optimization and recycling of waste materials by using discrete event simulation and mathematical modeling technique. Pham and Thomas (2011) and Thomas et al. (2012) also explain the sustainability issues with small and medium scale industries and propose a fit manufacturing strategy starting from strategy development through financial planning to operationalization with one team one vision for better coordination. Joung et al. (2013) classifies the sustainability indicators into five major enablers of sustainable manufacturing such as environmental, social, economic, technology and performance but didn’t go in detail about the interrelationship among the indicators.