A systematic literature review to map literature focus of sustainable manufacturing

Manufacturing industries need to bring the balance among economical, environmental, and social aspects for sustaining the market existence. Sustainable Manufacturing is one of the recent beneficial areas which can bring the balance among economical, environmental, and social aspects. A comprehensive review study needs to be carried out for a better understanding of sustainable manufacturing. The prime objective of the present study is to explore different insights from the past literature which can assist the better adoption of sustainable manufacturing. To explore various insights and gaps in sustainable manufacturing, 541 articles are selected from SCOPUS database (January 2001 to March 2019). The selected articles are categorized based on year, publishers, journals, the status of the country, universities, citations, manufacturing industries, research design, multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) techniques, data analysis techniques, sustainable dimensions, and focused areas. The categorization of selected articles assists in exploring various gaps such as 70.43% of the studies in the literature are focused on qualitative aspects. Most of the studies in the literature are dominated by developed countries as 63.40% of the studies are carried out in developed countries. Looking at the significant contribution in the economical development of any country, the sustainable manufacturing adoption in food (2.96%), steel (2.77%) and chemical (2.77%) industries is recorded to be limited. More sustainable solutions must be identified which can reduce negative environmental impacts of the manufacturing processes. The selection of articles for the present study is limited to SCOPUS database which is a limitation of the present study.