What Role Does Maintenance Play in Achieving Sustainability in Manufacturing? - A Scoping Literature Review

Abstract

Sustainability has become an important topic in society, industry, and academia. It influences decisions on many levels and there are already many approaches to achieving sustainability in everyday life. One of the areas with the greatest impact on sustainability is production. Maintenance is often neglected when considering sustainable development, although it can play an important role in achieving sustainability within the three dimensions economy, ecology and social. This paper is a scoping literature review that identifies and classifies publications on sustainable maintenance in the manufacturing industry for the period 2017 to November 2021 and presents the results organized into categories. The categories include the contribution of maintenance to sustainability, influence of sustainability on maintenance, methods, and tools for sustainable maintenance, and enabling technologies for sustainable maintenance 4.0. A trend can be identified that sustainable maintenance has received increasing attention in recent years. The research takes place mainly in theory. Numerous methods, tools and frameworks have been identified that can increase sustainability in maintenance. Not all outcomes however can be classified as covering all three pillars of sustainability. While many focus on ecology, only few are committed to social sustainability as well. For the future, it is important to consider the three areas of sustainability as a unit rather than separately, and to apply the research conducted in sustainable maintenance in practice.