Sustainability of manufacturing and services: Investigations for research and applications

Sustainable business development (SBD) in manufacturing and services (M&S) has become a crucial issue in recent years owing to the impact of global warming, terrorism, earthquakes, hurricanes, and carbon footprint awareness, to site but a few causes. Various stakeholders, i.e. members of the human race, have realized that the future of the earth, and therefore that of future generations, is at stake. It is not enough to be successful in business, it is becoming imperative to safeguard the environment, safety and welfare of those alive today and prepare for those yet to come. There has been much discussion across numerous forums and media platforms including academic and industrial reports indicating the importance of SBD. However, few reports provide a complete overview of SBD in M&S, or the strategies and techniques available in the literature that would be helpful for SBD. An attempt has been made in this paper to provide an overview of the available SBD literature by classifying and then critically reviewing the material to develop a framework for SBD and suggest future research directions. This also includes tools, techniques and some performance measures and metrics for SBD. A summary of findings and conclusions are reported at the end of the work.