**Preface to "Sustainable Industrial Engineering along Product-Service Life Cycle/Supply Chain"**

To try to answer the challenge of developing sustainable societies, supply chains are compelled to reinvent their processes and practices by continuously incorporating sustainability guidelines into their decisions. The International Institute for Sustainable Development defines sustainable development as development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. To tackle this challenge, supply chains and society in general must respond effectively to today's environmental, economic and social challenges.

Industrial engineering is concerned with value creation, building a bridge between technology and management. Development of new technologies can only take place if technologists and engineers have a good understanding of the needs of those who will be affected by new technologies. Engineering innovations need to respond to social demand while taking ecological and economic principles into account. The design, operation, and assessment of such sustainable manufacturing systems within the limitations of renewable resource generation and social compatibility are major challenges in the 21st century. This concern contributes to enhancing the importance of controlling the product service along its lifecycle using the methodology of sustainability life cycle assessment for assessing the economic, environmental, and social performance of a product service, from cradle to cradle. Cleaner production is also a concern for sustainable industrial engineering systems aimed at making a more efficient use of natural resources and reducing the generation of wastes and emissions at the source, through the implementation of some practices, such as technology modification, sustainable operations, reduce, recycling and reuse, and product modification. Cleaner production strategies, industrial symbiosis, and eco-efficiency strategies are amongst some tools of sustainable industrial engineering which can help in the achievement of sustainable engineering solutions. These sustainable industrial engineering practices along the supply chain help to reverse the adverse effects of the industry, and the use of environmentally friendly and socially beneficial practices may help to improve business profitability.

Sustainable industrial engineering addresses the issue of the sustainability of industry from an economic, an environmental and a social and societal point of view. Its application fields are the whole value chain and lifecycle of products/services, from the development to the end-of-life stages. This book focuses on how sustainable industrial engineering can contribute to supply chains becoming more sustainable.

#### **Jo ˜ao Carlos de Oliveira Matias, Susana Garrido Azevedo, Carina Pimentel** *Editors*
