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Top1. Introduction
According to Al-Odeh. & Smallwood (2012), ever changing business environment and complexities in regulating an organization’s environmental issues have resulted in methodical regulations and helped in improving the customers’ awareness. Customer’s consciousness put pressure on organizations to adopt sustainable strategies in Supply chain management. Organizations develop sustainable supply chain management strategies seriously considering the consumers awareness and interest. Organizations also spent more efforts to meet their buyer’s specifications. Organizations have also been developing, assessing and monitoring procedures to achieve sustainability in SCM. The emerging technological developments have played a significant role in improving the quality of SSCM practices for implementation.
1.1 Sustainable Development
Sustainability concerns the environmental influence on future generations. Sustainability is an endeavor to protect the extensive expression of functioning of a company, its supply chains, and its society. Architecturing a sustainable supply chain compels acute emphasis on long-term strategies; preserving a sustainable supply chain demands emphasizing on operational supremacy and management of jeopardy in the supply chain. In fact, active risk management is a fundamental ingredient of any sustainability maneuver.
The concept of sustainable development serves an outline for the economical usage of resources, productive development of infrastructure, preservation and improvement of quality of life, economic or business development whilst safeguarding the environment. Sustainable development can also be defined as a process of change to bring a new order of development to achieve sustainability. This nuclear term is not only limited to corporal values, economic advancement, material flows and physical environmental progression, but also comprises the public well-being and quality of social existence.
According to Elkington (1997), the three pillars of the triple bottom line concept include economy, social development and environmental quality, in the administration process. Sustainability has been defined as the objective of sustainable development, which are “types of economic and social developments that safeguard and enrich the natural environment and social fairness” (Diesendorf, 2000). Hence concept of sustainable development is being practiced or emerging to build better organizational structure, as well as considering all dimensions of sustainability, in operational parlance Sahu et al., 2017a,b,c,d,e;2018a,b.
The objectives of our current work is to review the sustainability issues in manufacturing, to review the literature based on three dimensions of sustainability, to review performance evaluation concept as a sustainable supply chain management perspective and to frame a relevant propositions in line of the above research objectives.
2. Sustainable Supply Chain
The concept of sustainable development is very closely linked with supply chain systems. Supply chains are responsible for transferring raw materials to useful products finally into the hands of consumer. Large numbers of intermediate processes are involved such as transportation, manufacturing, distribution etc. All these processes affect the surroundings in more than one ways. Therefore, sustainable supply chains are considered to be an important aspect of business which ensures minimum negative impact of business processes on the surroundings.
Numerous definitions have been proposed for the term sustainable supply chain. Here are a few simplistic and more common definitions for better understanding of the term sustainability in context of supply chains.
According to Business for Social Responsibility (2007), “sustainable supply chain is a system of aligned business activities throughout the life cycle of products that creates value to stakeholders, ensures ongoing commercial success, and improves the well-being of people and the environment”.
According to Carter& Rogers (2008), Sustainable supply chain refers to an integration of social, environmental, and economic issues in a traditional supply chain.
According to Srivastava (1995), the potential for reducing long term risks in a supply chain is associated with resource depletion, fluctuations in energy costs, product liabilities, and pollution and waste management.