3.3. Sustainability in supply chains
There are numerous papers that address sustainability in supply chain settings. These papers do not explicitly discuss alternative facility locations, but acknowledge that there are facilities in different locations and that the supply chain needs to take various aspects of sustainability into account for long-term success. Table 4 presents an overview of the aspects and specific issues that are treated in this literature. The analytic categories were derived in an inductive way based on the content analysis of the papers in this review, as suggested by e.g. Rowley and Slack (2004), Seuring and Müller (2008), Seuring and Gold (2012)
3.4. Factors to consider
Even though only 6 articles were classified as discussing factors to consider when dealing with manufacturing facility location and sustainability, all articles in this literature review do bring up issues to that the respective authors feel should be considered in this context. One specific aspect is the dimensions of the concept of sustainability, i.e. economic, environmental, and social sustainability. Fig. 2 captures the number of articles that consider two of these dimensions or all three. It is clear that the environmental and economic issues dominate, and that the research on the social aspects of sustainability with relevance for manufacturing facility location is lagging. In the 48 papers covering all dimensions the social dimension is typically underrepresented.