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

Manufacturing organisations are facing the urge to adopt new strategies like sustainability to be able to respond to the market and customer's demand for sustainable products due to the scarcity of the natural resources or government policies. To serve this purpose, the main questions risen are 'How sustainability is defined through its dimensions?' and 'what sub-dimensions can denominate sustainable manufacturing?' Focusing on the questions, this study is cantered by a systematic literature review based on sustainability, its dimensions and sub-dimensions 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 organisations sketch their own sustainable strategies on more specific issues. The study of the dimensions led to a hierarchy of importance for the traditional three, in which environmental dimension of sustainability showed to be conspicuous. Therefore, the dimension was chosen for the further analysis conducted by Formal Concept Analysis (FCA) on its sub-dimensions to explore the trends in their combination by manufacturers while trying to reach sustainability.