Conclusions
Sustainable Supply Chain have becoming a critical issue to foster companies’ activities towards sustainability. This paper reviewed the set of papers published on SSC using OR methods from 1999 onwards and concluded that the work in the area continues to increase when compared to previous reviews (Brandenburg et al., 2014; Brandenburg & Rebs, 2015; Seuring, 2013). A systematic literature review methodology was followed, aiming at answering to a set of questions that help to understand how have been treated the three main research dimensions: decision levels; sustainability pillar; and OR method used. As main findings, it has been concluded that the authors publishing in the area are still far from having developed comprehensive models on SSC, and the notion of sustainable supply chain is still quite blurred. The authors have mainly been focused on the treatment of the economic and environmental aspects, and few works addressed the social aspect. A conceptual map, representing the main studied dimensions of SSC (decision levels, sustainability pillars and OR methods), was proposed allowing researchers and practitioners to visualize what has been done in the area. This, coupled with the deep analysis performed, resulted in the definition of a future research agenda framework composed by five main future research avenues: development of integrated decision models; sound treatment of the sustainability pillars; incorporation of uncertainty, risk and resilience management aspects into the OR models; explore a combination of OR methods so as to develop generic and solution efficient SSC models; study further reverse and closed-loop structures; expand the industrial applications. This agenda opens several opportunities for research and collaboration between academics and industries.
