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In the present scenario, the demand for additive manufacturing (AM) has increased. Taking into account environmental problems and sustainability, manufacturers are now also considering the environmental and sustainability criteria in their decision-making process. The sustainability concept is known as the triple-bottom line, namely, economic, social and environmental perspectives. Sustainable concept selection in the manufacturing organisation can be considered as the selection of sustainable material, product design, process, method and technology. This study aims to select an appropriate AM process by considering sustainability from various available techniques.

Appropriate sustainable performance indicators for the AM were identified based on literature as well as in discussion with experts and decision-makers. The model addresses all the major dimensions of sustainable concepts of AM such as material/product quality, machine performance, market stability, total cost and ecological values. A hybrid multi-criteria decision-making approach, i.e. stepwise weight assessment ratio analysis and complex proportional assessment methods, have been used to select the best AM technique. While selecting criteria affecting AM machines and processes, criteria based on the sustainable concept are considered.

Among the four selected AM processes, i.e. fused diffusion modelling (FDM), laminated object manufacturing (LOM), stereolithography apparatus (SLA) and selective laser sintering (SLS), the best alternative was found to be FDM.

The present study highlights some limitations in the selection of AM process and methodology used in this research. This study considers only four AM processes, i.e. FDM, LOM, SLA and SLS. Future work may include considering other AM processes and criteria that affect the sustainability of AM.

The present work will help researchers and production managers to decide the best AM alternatives to fabricate desired parts. Hence, AM can help in maximum energy utilisation, optimal consumption of resources, minimum material wastage and reduction of CO₂ emission.

The study considers some important criteria, including energy consumption, eco-friendly and wastage-free production, that help sustainable AM. This study can result in a good economic efficiency of AM industries and, therefore, positively impact customers using green products.

The purpose of this paper is to report a study on the application of interpretative structural modelling (ISM) integrated with multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) techniques for enabling the sustainability supplier selection.

In this paper, two approaches of hybrid MCDM methods are followed and the selection of sustainable supplier was based on the comparative results obtained from both the methods. The first hybrid approach is ISM – analytic network process (ANP) – ELimination and Et Choice Translating REality (ELECTRE II) and the second hybrid approach is ISM – ANP – Vlse Kriterijumska Optimizacija Kompromisno Resenje (VIKOR). ISM was used to identify the inter relationship between the criteria. Inter-relationship of criteria obtained from ISM will serve as an input for ANP. The weights obtained from ANP will be used in ELECTRE II and VIKOR. ELECTRE II is an outranking method, whereas VIKOR is a compromise ranking method; comparison of both the methods was carried out in this study.

In this study, two modules ISM–ANP – ELECTRE and ISM–ANP – VIKOR were compared for the problem of sustainable supplier selection. ELECTRE results with a single solution showed that Supplier 2 can be selected as the best supplier; VIKOR result shows that Supplier 1 and Supplier 2 can be selected as the best suppliers.

The selection of sustainable supplier considering the interrelationship of criteria using ISM and ranking the alternatives using compromise and outranking techniques was found to be original and novel contribution of the author.

Rapid prototyping (RP) has been given focus during dynamic market conditions, as it largely helps to compress product development time. RP contains the potential to achieve environmentally friendlier operations. However, RP processes are not environmentally friendlier, as the possibilities of toxicological health and environmental risks while handling and disposing of raw material remain unresolved. This study aims to select environmentally friendlier processes without compromising required mechanical properties. Some of the RP processes considered in this study are selective laser sintering (SLS), stereo lithography apparatus (SLA), three-dimensional printing (3DP) and laser engineered net shaping (LENS).

A conceptual model comprising 25 criteria (both traditional and environmental) has been developed. An expert team was formed to evaluate the environmental performance of RP processes using the developed conceptual model. Analytic network process–technique for order preference by similarity to an ideal solution-based hybrid methodology has been adopted for this purpose. Further, to overcome ambiguity and subjectivity nature of judgment, fuzzy set concepts have been adopted. Finally, a decision support system has been developed using MATLAB software to mitigate the associated computational difficulty.

The detailed analysis of criterion weights revealed that the expert team has assigned higher importance to environmental criteria over traditional criteria. Based on environmental considerations, ranking has been generated as SLA-SLS-3DP-LENS.

Only point-to-point and discrete fusion-based RP process have been considered in this study to demonstrate the developed conceptual model. Also, expert knowledge has been taken to rate some of the environmental criteria. In the near future, by conducting environmental studies, these criteria can be substituted with real data to improve accuracy of RP process selection.

Reported studies in RP process selection in literature were conducted considering mainly the various traditional criteria. In this study, the environmental criteria have also been considered along with traditional criteria. This study takes the initiative toward sustainability studies in RP processes. Also, detailed inferences have been derived and the results have been compared with the existing studies and this is the novel contribution of this study.

Historically, global events have always provided a setback to the existing mechanism of any business operation. The magnitude of such variation may be different from industry to industry but sustainable outlook afterwards any global crisis calls for a re-look into strategies. Similar experience persisted when sudden drop of brick-and-mortar stores during corona crisis came into picture. Post corona, the entire working style of supply chain companies revisited a virtual set-up. The delivery partners like Dunzo, Blinkit, Zypp, Delhivery, Ecomexpress have transformed the way logistics used to work before COVID-19. On the other hand, recent Russia–Ukraine war has posed further global challenges like that of food shortage, supply challenges, global inflation, recessionary trends worldwide. An investor earlier confident of exponential wealth creation in supply chain companies may have to rethink about resilient strategies while creating a portfolio with companies from supply chain industry. In the present study, a comparative analysis has been made by use of exponential Generalized AutoRegressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity (GARCH) model to explore the impact of both these crisis on returns from supply chain companies. The output of this chapter shall be beneficial for investors, asset management companies, investment brokers and other portfolio managers.

Sustainable end-of-life (Sus-EoL) practices can be achieved through manufacturing of sustainable products, and recovery and recycling after the use phase. To achieve Sus-EoL, the manufacturing organizations should handle their products after their EoL. The recovery of used products is achieved through the design of the collection location. However, the first step is to understand and identify the barriers (e.g. lack of awareness among people, lack of technology, etc.) which prevent the implementation of Sus-EoL practices. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This paper is about the 18 barriers responsible for the poor success of Sus-EoL practices of used plastic parts. By applying the DEMATEL method and by incorporating experts’ knowledge, a prominence and causal relationship diagram was developed through which the influential strength among barriers was studied.

The α value is computed as 0.068, and the values lower than α were eliminated to obtain the digraph. Poor curbside pick is identified as the most dominant barrier in implementation of Sus-EoL practices in plastic parts with an influential score of 3.96.

The research is conducted in the Indian scenario which could be extended to global context by selecting the suitable barriers.

The results from the study can be used by the managers of organizations to enhance the possibility of Sus-EoL practices by incorporating suitable strategies which is the significant contribution of this study.

In the past, few authors discussed about the barriers of Sus-EoL practices; however, the analysis of complex interrelationship does not exist. Thus, the global and group interrelationship has been studied which is expected to pave way for future research in the direction of elimination of barriers and so on.

There are many investigations in design methodologies, but there are also divergences and convergences as there are so many points of view. This study aims to evaluate to corroborate and deepen other researchers’ findings, dissipate divergences and provide directing to future work on the subject from a methodological and convergent perspective.

This study analyzes the previous reviews (about 15 reviews) and based on the consensus and the classifications provided by these authors, a significant sample of research is analyzed in the design for additive manufacturing (DFAM) theme (approximately 80 articles until June of 2017 and approximately 280–300 articles until February of 2019) through descriptive statistics, to corroborate and deepen the findings of other researchers.

Throughout this work, this paper found statistics indicating that the main areas studied are: multiple objective optimizations, execution of the design, general DFAM and DFAM for functional performance. Among the main conclusions: there is a lack of innovation in the products developed with the methodologies, there is a lack of exhaustivity in the methodologies, there are few efforts to include environmental aspects in the methodologies, many of the methods include economic and cost evaluation, but are not very explicit and broad (sustainability evaluation), it is necessary to consider a greater variety of functions, among other conclusions

The novelty in this study is the methodology. It is very objective, comprehensive and quantitative. The starting point is not the case studies nor the qualitative criteria, but the figures and quantities of methodologies. The main contribution of this review article is to guide future work on the subject from a methodological and convergent perspective and this article provides a broad database with articles containing information on many issues to make decisions: design methodology; optimization; processes, selection of parts and materials; cost and product management; mechanical, electrical and thermal properties; health and environmental impact, etc.

This paper aims to investigate an integrated approach that aims at enhancing the application process of value stream mapping (VSM) method. It also proposes an extended VSM called Economic and Environmental VSM(E-EVSM). The proposed approach highlights the improvement of economic and environmental performances.

The proposed approach has studied the integration of VSM, fuzzy decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) and fuzzy quality function deployment (QFD) to improve the economic and environmental performances of manufacturing processes. The VSM method is used for data collection and manufacturing process assessment, whereas fuzzy DEMATEL is used to analyse the current state map. Finally, fuzzy QFD is used to organize the improvement phase of VSM method.

The clear findings of this research prove the effectiveness of VSM method on the environmental and economic performances of manufacturing processes. In addition, the proposed approach will show the advantages of fuzzy DEMATEL and fuzzy QFD approaches in improving the application of the VSM method.

The limitation of this study includes the lack of consideration of other dimensions such as social, technological and managerial. In addition, the proposed approach studied an average set of environmental and economic indicators.

The novelty of the proposed approach is proved by the development of an extended VSM method (E-EVSM). Also, the proposed approach contributes by a new methodology for analysing and improving the current state map of manufacturing processes.