Flexible Sustainable Supply Chain Network Design: Current Trends, Opportunities and Future

Abstract

The present era is threatened due to fragile environment. Due to rapid change in climate and irresponsible consumption behaviors of human has led to natural resources scarcity and frequent natural disasters. The high degree of environmental uncertainty has attracted increasing attention from operations and supply chain management (O&SCM) researchers. Hence, supply chain network design is considered to be of high importance among various operations and supply chain management strategies to address one of the greatest concerns of the human being of the century. Melnyk et al. (2014) have noted in one of their seminal works that supply chain design problems are still underdeveloped and advocated for more comprehensive work towards development of sustainable and flexible supply chain network design. Similarly, the sustainable supply chain network design (SSND) though have attracted increasing attention from O&SCM community, however, still most of the questions related to SSCND are unanswered or silent to the body of knowledge. The most of the existing literature on sustainable supply chain network stem from operations research (OR) angle, however, the social issues largely remains unanswered. Second, the flexibility issues in SSCND are also not very well addressed in the existing literature. The current literature mainly attempted to address from the manufacturing perspective, however, the sustainability and flexibility, and integration of both these aspects into a single SSCND largely remains unexplored. Boyer and Swink (2008) have also noted that the existing O&SCM research lacks in multi-methods approach. However, multiple angles can help to take the current SSCND related research to a next level. To address the existing research gaps, the special issue titled: Flexible Sustainable Supply Chain Network Design was organized by the guest editors. The current aim of the special issue was to attract scientific manuscripts which help to contribute to flexible sustainable supply chain network design literature and offers multiple solutions to those practitioners who are engaged in managing complex issues related to sustainable supply chain network design. In this special issue, six papers after rigorous double blind review process and Editor-inChief final inputs are finalized and each paper contributes towards the sustainable and flexible aspects in the network design of the supply chain which adds value to the existing body of knowledge. & Surya Prakash Singh surya.singh@gmail.com