A Systematic Review of Sustainable Supply Chain Network Design: Optimization Approaches and Research Trends

Batool Madani (), Afef Saihi and Akmal Abdelfatah
Additional contact information
Batool Madani: Department of Industrial Engineering, American University of Sharjah, Sharjah P.O. Box 26666, United Arab Emirates
Afef Saihi: Department of Industrial Engineering, American University of Sharjah, Sharjah P.O. Box 26666, United Arab Emirates
Akmal Abdelfatah: Department of Civil Engineering, American University of Sharjah, Sharjah P.O. Box 26666, United Arab Emirates

Sustainability, 2024, vol. 16, issue 8, 1-33

Abstract: In response to the ever-increasing pursuit of competitiveness among organizations in today’s global business landscape, the subject of supply chain management has become a vital domain encompassing a wide range of sectors and industries across the economy. The growing concern about sustainable development has prompted public and private supply chain players to incorporate the three pillars of sustainability, namely, economic, environmental, and social, into the design of their supply chain networks. This study reviews and examines the content of 102 relevant papers to discuss the mathematical models, modeling approaches, and solutions that have been explored in the existing literature on forward sustainable supply chain network design. This paper also investigates the sustainability elements and supply chain network peculiarities including design factors and decision levels. In this review, several limitations in the current literature on sustainable supply chain network design optimization models are highlighted. According to the analysis, it was found that a better understanding of the industry and its sustainability requirements and priorities is essential for designing sustainable supply chain networks that are tailored to the needs of a specific industry rather than achieving general sustainability objectives. In addition, integrating strategic, tactical, and operational decision levels in the design of supply chain networks is critical for evaluating their impact on each other in terms of sustainability. More sophisticated mathematical solution methods for dealing with real-life scenarios including nonlinearity and uncertainty sources are required. The paper concludes with new prospects of research to promote a better integration of sustainability into supply chain networks.

Keywords: network design; optimization; supply chain management; sustainability (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/16/8/3226/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/16/8/3226/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:16:y:2024:i:8:p:3226-:d:1374486

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().