Sustainability Failure Mode and Effects Analysis - A systematic literature review

Over the last few decades, there has been increasing discussion on achieving a greater sustainability orientation for company products and processes by linking quality management, environmental and social management. Failure Mode and Effects Analysis is a central and widely used quality management tool aimed at preventing failures from leading to customer dissatisfaction. In the meantime, several literature reviews on FMEA have been published, which show a broad spectrum of instrument modifications, but generally within this content-related orientation as a quality-management instrument. The present literature review sheds a completely new light on the instrument, showing that the FMEA is increasingly modified in order to additionally align decisions in companies with ecological and social criteria. By presenting the first systematic literature review on sustainability-oriented FMEA, this study (i) demonstrates development trends and diversity in the corresponding publications, (ii) investigates the gaps and understudied fields, (iii) highlights key findings and potential approaches for further development.