As sustainability in manufacturing becomes increasingly important, numerous concepts, new technologies, and use cases for improving and assessing sustainability in manufacturing environments are emerging. However, there is a lack of a framework that shows an easy way to identify relevant topics for action in the field of sustainable manufacturing. The purpose of this publication is to provide a structure for the topic of sustainable manufacturing, to contribute to the understanding and classification of ongoing activities, and to identify starting points for future research and development. Within this publication, an extensive literature review is presented. A framework for sustainable manufacturing that acts as a call for action for academia and operations management in the industry alike is derived from this literature review. The framework is intended for Western countries, as, within this framework, aspects such as the elimination of enslaved persons and child labor in production are assumed to be implemented through legal regulations already. Details of the framework are elaborated, and its application is discussed. This publication contributes to a common, clear understanding of sustainability and the different aspects of sustainability in manufacturing.

The expansion of renewable energies and the concomitant compensatory measures, such as the expansion of the electricity grid, the installation of energy storage facilities, or the flexibilization of demand, lead to a more elaborated energy supply system. Furthermore, the technological development of small power plants has further progressed, and many novel technologies have achieved grid parity. For manufacturing companies, the integration of renewable generation plants at their own site therefore represents a promising strategy for being both technically independent of the electricity grid and autonomous of price policy decisions and volatile market prices. This paper outlines the existing decentralized, renewable power generation technologies, their energetic modeling, and a hybrid optimization methodology for their dimensioning that uses mixed integer linear programming (MILP) and linear programming (LP) problem formulation. Finally, the introduced dimensioning method is applied to an exemplary manufacturing company that is assumed to be in the central part of Germany and located in the metalworking sector. The company has an electricity demand of approximately 20,000 MWh/a. The optimization results in a maximum expansion of PV and the use of CHP to cover the base load leading to a promising energy cost reduction of almost 20%.