Social Sustainability in Production Planning: A Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

Sustainable production includes economic, environmental, and social aspects. However, social sustainability has received less attention, especially compared to the economic aspects. Next to technical and organizational measures, social improvements within supply chains can also be achieved through suitable production planning. Within production planning, production programs are determined, and the assignment of available resources (e.g., employees) is specified. Thus, the utilization and workload of employees are defined. This systematic literature review investigates to what extent such employee-related social aspects are reflected in production planning and discusses whether economic aspects dominate them. For this, a Scopus database search was carried out and 76 identified approaches were analyzed and categorized regarding the occurring employee-related social aspects and their implementation. Thus far, the approaches mainly consider single aspects on single planning levels. A consideration of a broad set of aspects along the entire production planning has rarely been studied. In particular, health and safety aspects are considered on the levels of assembly line balancing and job rotation. However, their impact is primarily determined by the specific settings of the decision-maker. To support decision-makers, only a few studies have investigated the effects based on real application scenarios. Further potential might be an extended modeling of social and economic interdependencies and a consideration of employee-related social aspects in medium- to long-term production planning.

Sustainable Production Planning and Control in Manufacturing Contexts: A Bibliometric Review

“…In the field of PPC, for example, planning shifts, which is a complex task that affects workers' social life and health, needs to include important preferences for co-workers, shifts, and machines in addition to abilities and competencies in worker models and adaptation approaches [43]. Only in recent years, researchers have begun to investigate this kind of sustainability issue [69][70][71].…”

Analysis of Economic, Education, and Skill Factors against High Unemployment: A Case Study in West Java Province

“…Existing literature emphasizes the importance of GDP growth, inflation rate, and industrial output in shaping employment opportunities [19]. Research highlights those periods of strong economic growth are often associated with lower unemployment rates [20]. However, the nature of this relationship is underscored, which argues that the quality and sustainability of economic growth play an important role in determining its impact on employment [21].…”

Established Production Planning And Control And Its Enhancement With Sustainability

“…In the context of socially-oriented PPC, approaches can be categorized into the following areas according to Trost et al (2022) (see Figure 2). For a comprehensive discussion, we refer to Trost et al (2022). Fig.…”

“…In this context, sustainability can be defined as "a development that meets the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs" (World Commission on Environment Development, 1987). With regard to production companies, Production Planning and Control (PPC) offers great potential for improving sustainability aspects (Terbrack et al, 2021;Trost et al, 2022).…”