  Citation: Becerra, P.; Mula, J.; Sanchis, R. Sustainable Inventory Management in Supply Chains: Trends and Further Research. Sustainability 2022, 14, 2613. https:// doi.org/10.3390/su14052613 Academic Editor: Georges Zaccour Received: 28 January 2022 Accepted: 21 February 2022 Published: 24 February 2022 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affil- iations. Copyright: © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). sustainability Article Sustainable Inventory Management in Supply Chains: Trends and Further Research Pablo Becerra 1,2 , Josefa Mula 1 and Raquel Sanchis 1, * 1 Research Centre on Production Management and Engineering (CIGIP), Universitat Politècnica de València, Alarcón 1, 03801 Alcoy, Spain; pbecerr@doctor.upv.es or pablo.becerra@uda.cl (P.B.); fmula@cigip.upv.es (J.M.) 2 Department of Industry and Business, Universidad de Atacama, Copiapó 1532297, Chile * Correspondence: rsanchis@cigip.upv.es Abstract: This article presents an overview of the models applied to sustainable inventory manage- ment in supply chains and a roadmap for new research. It aims to address the lack of understanding of how sustainability is being incorporated into quantitative inventory management models in the supply chain context. The study is based on a classification of the reviewed literature according to the following criteria: supply chain structure, environmental approach, problem type, modeling, and solution approach. As a result, 36 articles were analyzed and classified. The main findings show that studies that incorporate social sustainability into inventory management along supply chains are lacking, while environmental studies are a growing research area. Uncertainty issues also need to be incorporated into sustainable inventory management models. Another important result of this study is the definition of a roadmap with trends and future research guidelines. The identified future re- search guidelines include incorporating decisions that can help to improve economic, environmental, and social sustainability. Thus, future studies should focus on both following quantitative models that incorporate inventory decisions integrally with transportation and location decisions, and more complex models, and employing new algorithms and heuristics to solve them. Keywords: inventory management; sustainability; supply chain 1. Introduction The economic growth process based on process technology began after the first indus- trial revolution in the second half of the 18th century. The industrial revolution unleashed not only an economic, scientific, and technical boom but also an intensive, extensive and irrational use of natural resources to search for accelerated economic growth models that occurred when it began. Environmental aspects are very important for reducing the global warming effect associated with increasing CO 2 emission rates as a result of globalized industrialization, goods storage, and transportation. According to Arikan et al. [1], the storage and transport of goods are considered the most important causes of environmental hazards in the logistics chain and are the main reasons for CO 2 emissions. Sustainable inventory management (SIM) relates to decisions on inventory, warehous- ing, and material handling by focusing on reducing environmental and social impacts without affecting profitability [2]. Incorporating location and transportation issues into modeling could lead to sustainable supply chains (SCs). Recent research has highlighted the need to include factors other than traditional inventory models to design sustainable inventory systems by integrating the factors affecting the environmental impact into the traditional economic order quantity (EOQ) model [3]. It is crucial to develop a SIM model that takes into account income increase and waste prevention and reduces energy costs [4]. Decisions on lead times, replenishment quantities, and storage facilities influence emissions and costs [5]. Very few review articles have focused on the collection and analysis of inventory mod- els that include sustainability, which is the main motivation of this paper. Pattnaik et al. [6] Sustainability 2022, 14, 2613. https://doi.org/10.3390/su14052613 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability