Trade-offs among lean, green and agile concepts in supply chain management: Literature review

Due to market pressures and increased competition, companies were led to adopt collaborative working practices by creating product flows and integrated material and communication networks. Supply chains (SC) is an attempt to be more competitive and to success in this sector, are adopting new management paradigm. Among these concepts there are three that deserve special mention because of their importance to better SC performance: lean, green, and agile. However, the conciliation between lean and agile in order to decrease environmental impacts is relatively new topic, and it lacks of a clear and structured research definition. Thus, the aim of the present paper is to offer a systematic review of the existing literature on lean (L), green (G) and agile (A), aimed at providing guidance on the topic, finding new paths for research, and uncovering gaps and inconsistencies in the literature. Important issues for future research are then suggested in the form of research questions. This paper summarizes the state-of-art researches on lean, green, and agile supply chain management and the connection between them.