Directions for instilling economic and environmental sustainability across product supply chains

Abstract

Although sustainability is a frequent topic in product development literature, the often segmented and narrow scope of prior works limits the potential benefits of the industrial application of methods, models, and tools developed by the research community. The work herein has the goal of coalescing relevant, recent work supporting the economic and environmental aspects of sustainability for early stage product development by focusing on the interfaces between product design and supply chain operations. This discussion is intended to highlight past accomplishments and to be a call for action to the research community for the development of integrated methods, models, and tools to support sustainability initiatives across product supply chains. A literature review spanning product design, manufacturing, and supply operations management reveals several near-term research needs, which are organized into four highly promising foci addressing product architecture engineering, assembly/disassembly operation modeling, manufacturing process modeling, and joint optimization of life cycle activities. Finally, potential avenues for future collaborative research are presented and discussed.