Manufacturing facility location and sustainability: A literature review and research agenda

The perspectives on the manufacturing footprint of global firms are widening from the economic aspects to also include the environmental and social aspects. Thus, sustainability is becoming an important issue for the location of manufacturing facilities. It is therefore timely to review the relevant aspects and dimensions in the extant literature to investigate the relationship between sustainability and facility location. In this paper, we aim to understand how sustainability aspects are included in decision-making concerning manufacturing facility locations and the role of location in evaluating manufacturing sustainability. We examine the literature streams on sustainability and facility location. A comprehensive search includes peer-reviewed literature from 1990 to 2011. We propose a literature classification scheme with respect to focal area and research methodology. The content analysis identifies the environmental, social and economic perspectives and factors affecting location decisions. We synthesize the findings into a framework for taking sustainability aspects into account in manufacturing facility location decision-making. We also propose a research agenda for further research on sustainable locations.