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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.

Implementing sustainable practices in multi-tier supply chains (MTSCs) is a difficult task. This study aims to investigate why such endeavours fail and how MTSC partners can address them.

A single-case study of a global food retail company was used in this study. Semi-structured interviews with the case firm and its first- and second-tier suppliers were used to collect data, which were then qualitatively analysed using thematic analysis.

Major barriers impeding the implementation of sustainability in multi-tier food supply chains were revealed such as the cost of sustainability, knowledge gap, lack of infrastructure and supply chain complexity. Furthermore, the findings reveal five possible solutions such as multi-tier collaboration and partnership, diffusion of innovation along the chain, supply chain mapping, sustainability performance measurement and capacity building, all of which can aid in the improvement of sustainability practices.

Future research should investigate how specific barriers and drivers affect specific aspects of sustainability, pointing practitioners to specific links between the variables that can aid in tailoring sustainability oriented investment.

This research supports managerial comprehension of MTSC sustainability, pointing out ways to improve sustainability performance despite the complex multi-tier system of food supply chains.

The research on MTSC sustainability is still growing, and this research contributes to the debate about how MTSCs can become more sustainable from the perspective of the triple bottom line, particularly food supply chains which face significant sustainability challenges.

This study reviews scholarly work in sustainable green logistics and remanufacturing (SGLR) and their subdisciplines, in combination with bibliometric, thematic and content analyses that provide a viewpoint on categorization and a future research agenda. This paper provides insight into current research trends in the subjects of interest by examining the most essential and most referenced articles promoting sustainability and climate-neutral logistics.

For the literature review, the authors extracted and sifted 2180 research and review papers for the period 2008–2023 from the Scopus database. The authors performed bibliometric and content analyses using multiple software programs such as Gephi, VOSviewer and R programming.

The SGLR papers can be grouped into seven clusters: (1) The circular economy facets; (2) Decarbonization of operations to nurture a climate-neutral business; (3) Green sustainable supply chain management; (4) Drivers and barriers of reverse logistics and the circular economy; (5) Business models for sustainable logistics and the circular economy; (6) Transportation problems in sustainable green logistics and (7) Digitalization of logistics and supply chain management.

In this review, fundamental ideas are established, research gaps are identified and multiple future research subjects are proposed. These propositions are categorized into three main research streams, i.e. (1) Digitalization of SGLR, (2) Enhancing scopes, sectors and industries in the context of SGLR and (3) Developing more efficient and effective climate-neutral and climate change-related solutions and promoting more environmental-related and sustainability research concerning SGLR. In addition, two conceptual models concerning SGLR and climate-neutral strategies are developed and presented for managers and practitioners to consider when adopting green and sustainability principles in supply chains. This review also highlights the need for academics to go beyond frameworks and build new techniques and instruments for monitoring SGLR performance in the real world.

This study provides an overview of the evolution of SGLR; it also clarifies concepts, environmental concerns and climate change practices, particularly those directed to supply chain management.

The main purpose of this study is to provide a comprehensive review and critical insights of the application of fuzzy methods in modeling, assessing and understanding the various aspects of green and sustainable supply chains (SSCs).

The present study conducts a systematic literature review (SLR) and bibliometric analysis of 252 research articles. This study employs various tools such as VOSviewer version 1.6.10, Publish or Perish, Mendeley and Excel that aid in descriptive analysis, bibliometric analysis and network visualization. These tools have been used for performing citation analysis, top authors' analysis, co-occurrence of keywords, cluster and content analysis.

The authors have divided the literature into seven application areas and discussed detailed insights. This study has observed that research in the social sustainability area, including various issues like health and safety, labor rights, discrimination, etc. is scarce. Integration of the Industry 4.0 technologies like blockchain, big data analytics, Internet of Things (IoT) with the sustainable and green supply chain (GSC) is a promising field for future research.

The authors' contribution primarily lies in providing the integrated framework which shows the changing trends in the use of fuzzy methods in the sustainability area classifying and consolidating green and sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) literature in seven major areas where fuzzy methods are predominantly applied. These areas have been obtained after the analysis of clusters and content analysis of the literature presenting key insights from the past and developing the conceptual framework for future research studies.

Blockchain technology (BT) is creating a new standard for all business operations. It can assist businesses in handling the complexity of circular digital supply chain (DCM) management. Despite this optimistic view, several barriers hinder its implementation. In this regard, this study contributes to Industry 4.0, circular economy (CE), the viability with a critical emphasis on its potential ramifications and influence on the future agenda while using BT technology in the supply chain (SC). In addition, the research reduces the knowledge gap by investigating and ranking the key barriers to the deployment of BT in viable circular digital supply chains (VCDSCs) and studies their interdependencies and causal relationships. The purpose of this paper is to address these issues.

The barriers to BT adoption in the VCDSC are identified through a thorough literature review and considering viability performance. These barriers are then classified using the analytical hierarchy process (AHP) method. Decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) is then employed to examine the cause/effect, correlation, and connection among the 14 barriers selected barriers from the AHP classification to estimate each barrier's overall degree of impact over the others.

This paper identifies and analyzes the BT adoption barriers in the VCDSC as well as examines how the key barriers interact. As a result, according to the AHP/DEMATEL method, the most prominent influencing barriers to the BT implementation in the VCDSC are “Data transparency,” “Market competition,” “Missing infrastructure,” “Lack of standardization,” “Complex protocol,” “Lack of industry involvement,” “Financial constraints,” “Missing infrastructure,” “Data transparency” and “Interoperability.” The outcomes offer a potential path for identifying important barriers as well as insight into the implementation of BT in the SC while integrating different capabilities such as viability, sustainability and CE principles.

Managers and researchers will benefit from this research by gaining an understanding of the challenges that must be prioritized and examined for BT to be implemented successfully in the VCDSC.

The use and implementation of blockchain-enabled VCDSC continue to face challenges despite an increase in relevant practice and research. Despite the benefits of BT, managers struggle to apply such technology in the context of their company. In this respect, this paper uses an integrated AHP–DEMATEL for categorizing the BT barriers as well as the interrelationship between them. In this respect, this paper presents the BT barriers studied are those related to the use of BT in the SC while integrating different paradigms such as viability, digitalization and CE. While many studies look at the barriers to BT adoption; none of them has ever included the viable capability, which means the ability to “react agilely to positive changes, be resilient to absorb negative events and re-cover after disruptions and survive at long-term periods.” The study concludes with insightful comments based on the findings and suggestions for eradicating those obstacles and their associated effects.

The enormous amount of waste generated and the scarcity of natural resources worldwide have encouraged societies and industries to adopt the Circular Supply Chain (CSC) concept. With a focus on zero-waste generation, Circular Economy (CE) mimics the ecosystem cycle as an alternative to the traditional linear economic model. This paper aims to investigate the evolution of research themes in this research area, hence, trace the trajectory of development in the field of CSC.

The authors conduct scientometric analysis using Pajek and VOSviewer software to identify key themes in the Circular Supply Chain Management (CSCM) field. The Citation Path Analysis (CPA), including Main Path and Local Path analysis, has been followed by a critical review of the papers. This paper includes highlighting the interrelationships between the information flows in the topic of study as well as an analysis of keywords co-occurrence.

The analysis of keywords co-occurrence revealed that the earlier years of research in CSC were more inclined toward value chain, stakeholders and green supply chains, whereas, in recent years, topics like logistics, Industry 4.0 and food supply chain have been more focused upon. Further, the Main Path Analysis (MPA) revealed an evolving trajectory that examines challenges and opportunities in CSC, the economic aspects of implementing CSC, the impact on the firm's revenue growth and collaboration between multiple echelons of a supply chain and Industry 4.0.

The adoption of scientometrics analysis unveils the hidden flow of information, various themes of research and their interconnections. The development of research trajectories and progressive attention paid to certain topics is also discovered. The research findings could be used by researchers for further theoretical and research development.

This paper traces the path of development in the field of CSC and its emerging trends and provides a thorough understanding of the same. It enables research scholars to conduct an in-depth study in the CSC domain, adding to the body of literature.

Food Loss and Waste (FLW), a result of non-sustainable consumption and production, has significant socio-environmental impacts and is addressed in the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 12.3. To address current research on FLW and SDG 12.3, the authors aim to evidence the current state of knowledge on drivers and barriers to SDG 12.3 through a comprehensive literature review.

The authors employed a multi-step systematic literature review process and retrieved 171 studies addressing SDGs, with 83 explicitly addressing SDG 12.3. The analysis involved a qualitative content analysis of studies retrieved by analyzing key findings and relationships between drivers and barriers to FLW.

While academic research focuses on SDG 12.3 by stressing the necessity of FLW reduction, it fails to explain the drivers and barriers to minimizing FLW. The authors developed a conceptual framework to demonstrate how barriers and drivers can inhibit or stimulate the dynamics that will achieve SDG 12.3 through effective planning and management.

This study addressed the theoretical limitations of existing studies and clarified the critical gaps in the current literature, thereby guiding future researchers in the food supply chain (FSC) context.

The research to date focused on high-income countries, and future empirical studies should focus on consumption patterns, the associated drivers and barriers of food waste in low-income countries and its social impact.

The circular economy is a production and consumption model that encourages people to share, lease, reuse, repair, refurbish and recycle existing materials and products for as long as possible. The blockchain-based circular economy is being used in many industries worldwide, but Indian electronic MSMEs face many problems in adopting a blockchain-based circular economy. The research aims to discover the barriers the electronic MSMEs face in adopting a blockchain-based circular economy and pull back from achieving environmental sustainability in their operations.

Fifteen barriers are identified from the literature review and finalized with experts' opinions. These barriers are evaluated by using interpretive structural modeling (ISM), MICMAC analysis and fuzzy TOPSIS method.

Lack of support from distribution channels, lack of traceability mechanism and customer attitudes toward purchasing remanufactured goods are identified as the most critical barriers.

The study will benchmark the electronic MSMEs in achieving environmental sustainability in the blockchain-based circular economy.

It is a study that not only establishes a hierarchical relationship among the barriers of blockchain adoption in Indian electronic MSMEs but also verifies the results with fuzzy TOPSIS method.

The study proposes to determine the impending challenges to lean integration with Industry 4.0 (I4.0) in manufacturing that aims at achieving desired operational performance. Integrating lean and Industry 4.0 as the two industrial approaches is synergetic in providing operational benefits such as increasing flexibility, improving productivity, reducing cost, reducing delivery time, improving quality and value stream mapping (VSM). There is an urgent need to understand the integrated potential of OPEX strategies like lean manufacturing and also to determine the challenges for manufacturing SMEs and further suggest a strategic roadmap for the future.

The current work has used a combined approach on interpretative structural modeling (ISM) and fuzzy Matrice d'impacts croisés multiplication appliquée á un classment (MICMAC) approach to structure the multiple level analysis for the implementation challenges to integrate OPEX strategies with Industry 4.0.

The research has found that the indulgence of various implementation issues like lack of standardization, lack of vision and lack of trained support, all are the major challenges that inhibit the integration of OPEX strategies with I4.0 technologies in manufacturing.

The research has investigated the internal factors acting as a roadblock to lean and Industry 4.0 adoption. Further studies may consider external factors to lean and Industry 4.0 implementation. Also, further research may consider other operational excellence approaches and extend further to relevant sectors.

This study provides the analysis of barriers that is useful for the managers to take strategic actions for implementing OPEX strategies with I4.0 in smart manufacturing.

The research determines the adoption challenges towards the integrated framework. This is the first study to explore challenges in integrating OPEX strategies with I4.0 technologies in manufacturing SMEs.