Sustainability indicators for manufacturing sectors: A literature survey and maturity analysis from the triple-bottom line perspective

The purpose of this paper was to review the indicators for the three aspects (environment, economy and society) of sustainability (the triple-bottom line (TBL) perspective) for manufacturing sectors. In addition, this paper aimed to: document the sustainability indicators for manufacturing sectors; perform an analysis of these indicators to show their evolutional progress and maturity in terms of their consistent, repeated and standardized usage; and highlight the further work needed to make them mature and more standardized.

The following keywords were used to explore and find the relevant articles: sustainable manufacturing evaluation, sustainability indicators, life cycle assessment, tools for sustainability assessment, and economic and social evaluation in industries. To find articles within this sample, the major focus remained on the terms “indicators,” “metrics,” and “performance measures.” This paper systematically reviewed the studies and analyzed the different sustainability indicators from the TBL viewpoint. Following this, the documented indicators were critically discussed along with their evolutional progress and maturity level.

The results showed that solid waste was the least used and immature aspect in the environmental category, whereas the more frequently used and developed indicators were related to material used, energy used and air emissions. Economic assessment was most of the time limited to cost-based indicators. From a social viewpoint, most of the reviewed studies were based on workers and local community and society related indicators rather than consumers-based indicators. From a sectoral viewpoint, comparatively, studies for metal manufacturing industries were more focused on all three dimensions of sustainability. On an overall basis, of the 144 discussed indicators, almost 34 percent (49) were used just once. Comparatively, the usage of indicators was more mature in manufacturing activities of developed countries than developing ones. Moreover, the usage of indicators was more common at the product level than at the other levels.

Unlike previous sustainability indicator sets which were generally long lists of proposed indicators rather than applicable and measurable ones, this paper reported the indicator sets based on studies for manufacturing sectors. Moreover, in contrast to previous reviews on indicators which were mostly based on the environmental dimension, this paper included all three dimensions of sustainability in one comprehensive review while focusing on recent studies published from 2007 to 2017. This paper has explored the recent evolutional progress and maturity of sustainability indicators, and provided insights into their development in manufacturing sectors.