In 2002-2008, sustainable manufacturing research crystallized around embedding environmental considerations into early design through eco-design and lifecycle thinking, enabling design-for-sustainability across the value chain. Remanufacturing and product-service systems emerged as core pathways to extend product life and reduce environmental impact by pairing material recovery with service offerings. Cleaner production provided a unifying framework linking process innovations to operational performance, while measurement, modeling, and assessment frameworks underpinned systematic sustainability integration into manufacturing strategy. Historical Significance: The period produced pivotal breakthroughs such as cradle-to-cradle design, reframing sustainability as a design strategy and catalyzing circular economy thinking. It also established remanufacturing as a viable business model and produced design-for-remanufacturing guidelines to support modularity and disassembly. The late 2000s signaled a global shift toward digitalization and new business models enabling scalable, sustainable manufacturing, laying groundwork for future digital and data-driven transformations.