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Scarcity of resources, ecological imbalance, global warming, rising energy prices and the ever-changing need for variety have attracted the government and manufacturers for sustainable development of the industries. The integrated sustainable-green-lean-six sigma-agile manufacturing system (ISGLSAMS) provides a solid platform for meeting both the customers’ variety needs and business sustainability requirements. Many organizations opted for ISGLSAMS, but still due to various barriers organizations are not able to fully implement ISGLSAMS. The purpose of this paper is to identify the barriers to the ISGLSAMS, so that a more sustainable industrial manufacturing system and industrial symbiosis can be developed.

A literature review, from the Web of Science and Google Scholar database, has been carried out to identify the various barriers to the implementation of ISGLSAMS in the entire value chain. A total of 168 research papers have been reviewed for identifying the ISGLSAMS barriers.

This paper elaborates the concept of the ISGLSAMS, its attributes and various barriers and contributes to a better understanding and successful implementation of ISGLSAMS to meet business’ sustainability and market performance goals in the entire value chain. The paper also projects the future research framework and directions for the ISGLSAMS, integrated sustainable-green-lean-six sigma-agile (ISGLSA) product and ISGLSA supply and value chain.

The study contributes to a better understanding of ISGLSAMS’ barriers. The government, stakeholders and policymakers may plan the policy, road map and strategies to overcome the ISGLSAMS’ barriers. In-depth knowledge of subclauses of ISGLSAMS’ barriers will help the practitioners to overcome the ISGLSAMS’ barriers strategically. By overcoming the ISGLSAMS barriers, a more sustainable 7 Rs based market focused manufacturing system can be designed. This will also increase the opportunities to enhance the industrial ecology, industrial symbiosis and better recovery of the product, process and supply chain residual value. This will reduce the waste to the ecosystem.

This work has been carried out in search of a more sustainable manufacturing system, i.e. ISGLSAMS (which is 7 Rs based, i.e. 6 Rs of sustainability with 7th R, reconfiguration) to meet the customer variety needs along with sustainability in the ever-changing customer market. This study adds value to the practitioners to identify and prioritize the ISGLSAMS’ industry-specific barriers and design the solution for the more sustainable development of (1) industries, (2) the industrial symbiosis system and (3) the ISGLSA product, process, system and supply value chain with minimum resource consumption and environmental impact. The research also contributes to the (a) ISGLSAMS (b) ISGLSA supply chain (c) reconfigurable, sustainable and modular products and (d) redesign, recovery and refurbishing of the product to increase the product life cycle.