Decision support systems for sustainable manufacturing surrounding the product and production life cycle – A literature review

Abstract

Achieving sustainable manufacturing in enterprises in all three dimensions (economic, social, environmental) involves complex decision-making processes. New environmental regulations, requirements set by customers for sustainable products, and economic benefits through for example resource savings are drivers for enterprises to consider manufacturing from a sustainable perspective. To support decision makers in enterprises, decision-support systems can be used to analyze the production from a sustainable perspective and to create suggestions for optimization of products and processes. This literature review addresses decision-support systems for sustainable manufacturing and presents the most commonly used sustainable indicators and decision-making methods. The literature review is focused on research approach which consider all three dimensions of sustainability (economic, social, and environmental) and on decision support systems applied in the phases of the product and production life-cycle (product and production design, production planning, production, and remanufacturing of processes and products). The results of the review show, that current investigations of decision support systems are more focused on the integration of sustainability in all three dimensions (economic, environmental, and social) at the strategic planning level (design and remanufacturing of products and processes), which is not reflected well at the operational level (production planning and controlling), where decision-making is mostly driven by single sustainable dimensions (environmental and economic). In addition to economic and environmental objectives, sustainable production planning and controlling systems should also consider social planning objectives. Further research is required to identify which sustainable indicators can be considered in sustainable production planning and controlling systems.