An Analysis of Research Trends in the Sustainability of Production Planning

Abstract

Sustainability has become of great interest in many fields, especially in production systems due to the continual increase in the scarcity of raw materials and environmental awareness. Recent literature has given significant attention to considering the three sustainability pillars (i.e., environmental, economic, and social sustainability) in solving production planning problems. Therefore, the present study conducts a review of the literature on sustainable production planning to analyze the relationships among different production planning problems (e.g., scheduling, lot sizing, aggregate planning, etc.) and the three sustainability pillars. In addition, we analyze the identified studies based on the indicators that define each pillar. The results show that the literature most frequently addresses production scheduling problems while it lacks studies on aggregate production planning problems that consider the sustainability pillars. In addition, there is a growing trend towards obtaining integrated solutions of different planning problems, e.g., combining production planning problems with maintenance planning or energy planning. Additionally, around 45% of the identified studies considered the integration of the economic and the environmental pillars in different production planning problems. In addition, energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions are the most frequent sustainability indicators considered in the literature, while less attention has been given to social indicators. Another issue is the low number of studies that have considered all three sustainability pillars simultaneously. The finidings highlight the need for more future research towards holistic sustainable production planning approaches.

Aggregate Production Planning with Organizational Learning and Social Sustainability Considerations – Current Gaps and Future Opportunities

“…In this fast-paced challenging market, an enormous amount of internal and external variables influences the entire production system's competitiveness. In workforce-dependent industries, significant concerns have been raised in Proceedings of the International Conference on Industrial Engineering and Operations Management Manila, Philippines, March 7-9, 2023 © IEOM Society International recent years regarding workforce aspects related to the social pillar of sustainability, such as social distancing, overtime working hours, employee satisfaction, training of the temporary workforce, job security, and employee safety (Khaled et al 2022). In addition, the substantial global aspiration to force sustainability restrictions through all attributes of resources in the industry adds more sophistication to the planning activities throughout the entire supply chain (Rasmi et al 2019).…”

“…According to the recent review by Khaled et al (2022), most sustainability case studies in production planning focus on energy parameters. Moreover, recent studies stated that the number of case studies on production planning problems that simultaneously consider economic, environmental, and social pillars together is limited, and that among all sustainability pillars, social sustainability is the least considered pillar in this field, either as a single pillar or when integrated with other pillars (Khaled et al 2022;Türkay et al 2016).…”

“…The APP problem generally aims to find the ideal production quantity considering inventory capacity and lowering cost employment level throughout a finite planning horizon (Cheraghalikhani et al 2019). APP's primary objective is to manage plant capacity to fit demand while considering lowering the costs and presence of limited financial resources (Khaled et al 2022). A typical APP problem involves simplification of considered influencing factors, such as machine failures, workforce productivity, backorders, setup time, changeover time, and delivery lead time.…”

Evaluating the challenges to Life Cycle Assessment using Best‐Worst Method and Decision‐Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory

“…All the 17 SDGs may have direct impact on the economic, environmental, and social development of the community 4 . Since then, the need to incorporate the sustainability concept has become mandatory in many fields, and the industrial community is the one that needs it the most 5 …”

“…4 Since then, the need to incorporate the sustainability concept has become mandatory in many fields, and the industrial community is the one that needs it the most. 5 As an initiative to move to sustainable industrial practice, the industrial community has conceptualized and developed techniques like green manufacturing, circular economy, and circular bioeconomy. 6 All these techniques were developed to minimize waste generation and emissions.…”