Application of Optimization Models in Sustainable Supply Chain Management: A Systematic Review Based on PRISMA Guidelines

Sustainable supply chain management has been a prominent area of research in the past decade. Additionally, researchers have been increasingly utilizing optimization models in sustainable supply chain management. This article presents a review of sustainable supply chain management literature and explores the utilization of optimization models in this domain. This review article critically examines sustainable supply chain management challenges and the application of optimization models to address them. This literature review uses PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-analyses) methodology. By exploring the Web of Science and Scopus databases, 86 publications published during 2014–2023 in 44 journals have been identified for conducting this review. A complete assessment of these studies concludes that the research that integrates the three dimensions of sustainability, viz. economic, environmental, and social, is limited. Future research should focus on developing a comprehensive framework that captures the three dimensions of sustainability simultaneously. This can be achieved by developing optimization models that concurrently consider economic, environmental, and social issues. In addition, future research should focus more on developing and applying stochastic models capturing uncertainties in the supply chain to design a practical and sustainable supply chain network.