Evaluation of sustainability using an integrated approach at process and product level: a case study

The present world is facing problems like rapid depletion of natural resources and undesired environmental changes on a global scale. Manufacturing organisations are realising the importance of mitigating the present crisis and are adopting sustainable manufacturing principles. Since it is important to achieve sustainable manufacturing, sustainability assessment models were developed. Sustainability assessment models have their own drawbacks and may not provide clear scope for complete sustainable development. A system approach has been developed to overcome this shortcoming by integrating various sustainability assessment models that are already in practice. This article reports the advantages of collecting the advantages of individual sustainability assessment models and how the implementation of the integrated approach has helped to identify the current sustainability level and the scope for future developments in an automotive industry.     

Sustainable supplier selection criteria classification for Indian iron and steel industry: a fuzzy modified Kano model approach

ABSTRACT

The aim of this work is to provide a systematic approach for sustainability criteria clustering into different useful categories. For this purpose, a methodology has been proposed with the following three steps. (i) A comprehensive set of the sustainability criteria in economic, environmental and social dimension has been extracted from the literature and have been customised for the iron and steel industry. (ii) A fuzzy Kano methodology has been used to classify these sustainability criteria into useful Kano cluster like must-be, one-dimensional, and attractive cluster (iii) further, must-be and attractive criteria derived from the second step were further sub-classified into three categories using Type IV Kano model. All steps have been examined in the iron and steel industry of India and findings indicate that quality and delivery criteria are classified as high must be criteria in the economic realm. Further, environmental and energy management system in the environmental dimension and social responsibility and right of stakeholders criteria in the social dimension are classified as high must be criteria. Prioritising must be and attractive criteria enable decision makers of other industries to select the appropriate criteria to adopt sustainability.     

Economic Modelling in Sustainability Science: Issues,Methodology, and Implications

Sustainability science is a new branch of human knowledge. It is necessary to model sustainability science based on a framework consisting of the interactions of society, ecology, the environment and the economy. This paper develops such a model, the SEEOSG model, containing the essential structural relationships that incorporate the environmental and economic conditions required for sustainability. The model is solved as a dynamic optimisation problem. This optimal growth model of ecology and economic growth enables us also to analyse the issues which are specific to sustainability science such as the ecologically sustainability and inter-generational equity implications of economic activities and policies. In the model results growth maximisation goals appear to be fraught with difficulties such as infeasibility and non-sustainability. The results also suggest also that an equilibrium ecological and economic system does not sustain over a very long period of time unless appropriate actions are taken. Readers should send thier comments on this paper to: BhaskarNath@aol.com within 3 months of publication of this issue.     

Creating a “values” chain for sustainable development in developing nations: where Maslow meets Porter

This paper serves to establish an appropriate framework for prioritizing policy related to sustainable development by combining elements of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory with Porter’s value chain theory. An appropriate balance of social sustainability, economic sustainability, and environmental sustainability is defined so that policy makers may be provided some direction in regard to appropriate and socially just resource priorities. The model that forms the basis for this framework is then tested through hierarchal regression analysis using data from 45 developing countries. Using these results, the values chain framework has been refined to consider that self-actualization and sustainable development are one and the same and that the satisfaction of society’s physiological needs through the prioritization of policies related to environmental sustainability is the principle motivator for moving on to the attainment of higher-order needs such as increased levels of sustainable development.     

一般持续发展论（下）

本文比较全面地论述了持续发展的由来、概念、目标和战略要素。作者指出,持续发展的提出反映了人类对自身与环境关系的认识进入新阶段;是既满足当代人和局部需要又不危害后代人和全球满足需要能力的发展,包括一般持续发展论、全球持续性、区域持续性和部门持续性。作者认为,社会福利既包括人造产品也包括自然资本,持续发展的目标在于促进社会福利的增长与公平分配,以及生态系统的持续性;而达到持续发展目标的战略要素则包括经济结构的生态现代化、实行以预防为主的环境政策、经济机制的生态现代化、实行有控制的人口转变以及反贫困。在目标和战略要素的论述中,作者提出了发达和发展中国家(地区)应分别实行强持续性和弱持续性。     

Decision support for sustainable manufacturing using decision guidance query language

Sustainability has become a very significant research topic as it impacts many different manufacturing industries. Therefore, the technologies for monitoring, analysing, evaluating and optimising the sustainability performance of manufacturing processes and systems are very critical for decision makers on the shop floor. This paper introduces a decision guidance management system that provides actionable recommendations through quantitative analysis of the sustainability measures of manufacturing processes and systems based on life cycle assessment. The system determines decision preferences through dynamically collected data and decision makers' responses, taking into account the prevailing constraints. Optimal decisions can be derived using mathematical and constraint programming. By using decision guidance query language, this methodology allows users to make optimal decisions without an extensive mathematical or operations research background. Knowledge of relational databases is sufficient for a user to formulate the optimisation problem and obtain optimal solutions. The methodology is demonstrated with a machining operation case study, in which a list of sustainability metrics are identified and sustainability modelling methods are proposed. Important sustainable machining performance measures are optimised, resulting in actionable recommendations.     

Reimagining Sustainability: An Interrogation of the Corporate Knights' Global 100

This study examines sustainability reports of the Corporate Knights' “Global 100 Most Sustainable Companies in the World” in order to examine if and how they have been affected by Arturo Escobar's original critique of sustainable development (SD). Via thematic analysis, the study reveals that these corporations have circumvented Escobar's assessment by emphasizing sustainability as corporate growth and profit, without addressing some of the most prominent social concerns in our world today. The goal of this study was to trigger new ways of imagining SD, which speak to issues of equality and justice. Thus, it advances a view of sustainability that is driven by the logic of nature rather than by the logic of market. This study also suggests that researchers and practitioners should define praxis through engagement with local communities rather than through the traditional top-down approaches to sustainability.     

Assessing the sustainability of agriculture: a case of Mae Chaem Catchment, northern Thailand.

Sustainability is not a new concept but rather a prominent concept at the present time. Researchers have categorized sustainability indicators into economic, social, and ecological aspects. Sustainability of agriculture in the context of development efforts has to meet production efficiency, resilience of ecosystems, appropriate technology, maintenance of the environment, cultural diversity, and satisfaction of the basic needs. The research objective of this study is to determine the critical indicators of agricultural sustainability in the Mae Chaem Catchment, northern Thailand. In assessing sustainability, the authors applied the sustainability indicator analysis developed by FAO. The results of the study show that food sufficiency in the Wat Chan subcatchment is the most sustainable aspect of agriculture. The least sustainable facets of agriculture in the Wat Chan subcatchment are land holding size, land tenure, and water shortage. While expansion of agricultural land in the watershed area is not legally permitted, a practice of agroforestry is recommended. Insecure land tenure may result in reduced incentives to improve land productivity. Thus, official recognition of land ownership is required. As the problem of water shortage is most critical in the lower reaches, increased participation in the allocation scheme by downstream villagers should be encouraged. Finally, the construction of a small-scale water storage in the lower part of the catchment to increase water supply should be considered.     

国内外可持续发展评价方法对比分析

国际、国内很多组织都对可持续性评价方法进行过研究分析,但大多是特定的案例研究.目前国内外对可持续发展评价方法没有一个全面系统的分析比较,使得不同地区比较起来很困难.本文对各种评价方法如环境可持续性指数法、生态足迹法、能值分析法和指标综合评价法的来源、理论和应用作了介绍.得出各方法适用范围:可持续性指数法适合于国家间的综合评价;生态足迹和能值分析法适合于各种范围,包括国家、区域、地区和小系统;指标体系综合评价法对于小范围更合适.同时对各种方法的优势和缺陷进行了分析讨论,得出:可持续性指数法信息量大,但是计算复杂;生态足迹法计算过程简单,但是缺失一些可持续性信息;能值分析法考虑问题全面,但是其原理涉及热力学知识,很难被一些学者认同;指标体系评价法变通性较大,可随着评价系统的变化而进行调整,但是主观性较强.通过分析指出不同方法适用范围并指出每种分析方法的优势和不足,为以后选择合适的分析方法评价对象的可持续性提供依据.     

Social sustainability in supply chain decisions: Indian manufacturers

The purpose of the paper is to assess the inclusion of social sustainability in the decisions of supply chain in multinational manufacturing organisations in India. Indian organisations are resorting to sustainability-based reporting for greater transparency and for creation of brand value for their organisations. There are tremendous economic upheavals and changes across the complete value chain, and thus, responsible business practices are becoming a necessity for the long-term survival of organisations. Sustainability, as a strategy, is responsible utilisation of resources and is reported through social, economic and environmental factors in an organisation. For sustainability as a strategy, there has to be a complete organisational inclusion and employee engagement through decision making at operational levels along the value chain. The research paper is an empirical study done through a survey using a structured questionnaire to collect information to evaluate decision criteria particularly for social sustainability, from the middle and top level executives in Indian manufacturing organisations. Multinational manufacturing organisations in India are trying to be more responsible because of mandated CSR policy, and thus, sustainability through social factors is getting more prominence. A multiple linear regression analysis is used to explain the correlation and inclusion of social factors on the decision-making process in the supply chain of multinational manufacturing organisations in India. This study reveals that decision making in the supply chain of multinational manufacturing organisations in India specifically in manufacturing industry is incorporating social sustainability. The study highlights that decision making involving social sustainability needs larger frameworks for organisational preference. While the study provides evidence of social sustainability-based practices in multinational manufacturing organisations in India, it does not deal with social sustainability practices. The study also has limitation as has been limited to organisations which follow sustainability practices and make disclosures through GRI framework.     

Uncovering the Connections Among Sustainability, Governance and GDP

This paper examines the connections among sustainability, governance and GDP, using the data from 123 countries. Sustainability is found to be related with GDP in two contradictory ways. On the one hand, growth in GDP strengthens a nation＇s ability to maintain favorable environmental conditions into the future. On the other hand, GDP growth is built on more consumption of natural resources, and therefore generates a larger ＂foot-print＂ on the Earth. Governance plays a key role in sustainable development. However, it is not helping to reduce our footprint on the Earth. In fact, good governance is linked to a larger footprint. This reflects our materialist value and human impulse. When a society prefers the comfort and wellbeing of human beings to the welfare of its environment, democratic governance might be used as an effective tool against nature.     

A sustainability assessment framework for regional-scale Integrated Coastal Zone Management (ICZM) incorporating Inclusive Wealth,Satoumi, and ecosystem services science

Sustainability has become an increasingly important concept in the last few decades; however, its operational usefulness has not always been clear. In other words, some sustainability assessments may not provide decision makers with the practical information necessary to perform the assessment. This study proposes a novel operational sustainable assessment framework for Integrated Coastal Zone Management (ICZM) on a regional-scale based on a feasibility study in the Seto Inland Sea in Japan. The framework draws upon three separately developed concepts: Inclusive Wealth as the technical framework for the sustainability indicators; Satoumi (a traditional Japanese multifaceted coastal zone concept); and ecosystem services science. These three concepts complement each other when seeking to corroborate an assessment framework. Indicators based on the framework and relevant to the case study site were identified. Although Satoumi is a traditional Japanese knowledge, it is believed that its application may be instructive for other areas, as similar concepts can be found and utilized for the conduct of ICZM sustainability assessments.     

When experts disagree: the need to rethink indicator selection for assessing sustainability of agriculture

Sustainability indicators are well recognized for their potential to assess and monitor sustainable development of agricultural systems. A large number of indicators are proposed in various sustainability assessment frameworks, which raises concerns regarding the validity of approaches, usefulness and trust in such frameworks. Selecting indicators requires transparent and well-defined procedures to ensure the relevance and validity of sustainability assessments. The objective of this study, therefore, was to determine whether experts agree on which criteria are most important in the selection of indicators and indicator sets for robust sustainability assessments. Two groups of experts (Temperate Agriculture Research Network and New Zealand Sustainability Dashboard) were asked to rank the relative importance of eleven criteria for selecting individual indicators and of nine criteria for balancing a collective set of indicators. Both ranking surveys reveal a startling lack of consensus amongst experts about how best to measure agricultural sustainability and call for a radical rethink about how complementary approaches to sustainability assessments are used alongside each other to ensure a plurality of views and maximum collaboration and trust amongst stakeholders. To improve the transparency, relevance and robustness of sustainable assessments, the context of the sustainability assessment, including prioritizations of selection criteria for indicator selection, must be accounted for. A collaborative design process will enhance the acceptance of diverse values and prioritizations embedded in sustainability assessments. The process by which indicators and sustainability frameworks are established may be a much more important determinant of their success than the final shape of the assessment tools. Such an emphasis on process would make assessments more transparent, transformative and enduring.     

Manufacturing system sustainability through lean and agile initiatives

Sustainability is one of the most critical issues facing manufacturers today. The industries must develop new and innovative approaches to ensure sustainability in economic, environmental and social aspects. The operational excellence strategies such as Lean and Agile manufacturing can be applied in the industries that add value to the product by eliminating waste and quickly respond to dynamic changes in demand. This paper presents a framework that builds and assesses the sustainability of the manufacturing system with combined lean and agile concepts. Analytical Hierarchy Process and Analytical Network Process are identified as suitable methodologies to analyze the model. The model is validated in an Ayurveda Pharmaceutical industry to identify the most important factors of lean and agile manufacturing that build and enable the sustainability dimensions such as Economic, Environmental, Social, Technological and Ethical. The results show that the industry focuses more on economic aspects of sustainability followed by social, environmental, ethics and technological dimensions of sustainability in the case of a lean perspective. For an agile perspective, the weightage is more for social dimension followed by ethics, economic, technological and environmental dimensions of sustainability.     

“Measuring Sustainability”: A Multi-Criterion Framework

So far, the elementary question of whether one country’s or region’s economy is moving towards sustainability or away from it cannot be answered with unanimous consensus on the ‘measuring rod(s)’ to be employed. The main assumption of this article is that sustainability assessment needs a set of multi-dimensional indicators. From this assumption a question arises: how could such indicators be aggregated? Often, some indicators improve while others deteriorate. For instance, when incomes grow, SO₂ might go down while CO₂ increases. It has to be noted that this is the classical conflictual situation studied in multi-criteria decision theory. The use of a multi-criterion framework for making operational the ‘measuring of sustainability’ is discussed here by means of illustrative examples and more formal arguments.     

Sustainability classifications in engineering: discipline and approach

In order to discuss how to advance sustainability in engineering, it is necessary to be clear as to what exactly is the science of sustainability. The linkage between sustainability philosophy and scientific principles has, in some ways, been acknowledged in the wider literature. Moreover, the recent scholarship on sustainability in international literature has focused on providing definitions, policies and methods, though from an engineering perspective, there is an obvious need for clarity on how the engineering and science community can integrate the science of sustainability into practice. Prima facie, this article provides an overview of the development of sustainability science through a textual analysis to collate the underlying discourse and ideology cited in literature. While the number one sustainability challenge is to mitigate climate change, compiling a definition genesis of sustainability will assist the engineering community in gaining an understanding in the underlying philosophical frames. The aim of this paper is to analyse sustainability information in the print press, journals, periodicals and textbooks since publication patterns contribute to our understanding of the cognitive aspects of scholarly knowledge development.     

Assessing sustainability in nature-inspired design

In the field of sustainable product development, a new perspective for approaching sustainability has been advocated, challenging designers and engineers to aim beyond ‘reducing unsustainability’. Several design strategies – including Biomimicry and Cradle to Cradle – have been suggested for developing truly sustainable, or ‘beneficial’, products. But do these strategies help in developing such products, and how to assess their ‘sustainability’? Based on a review of the objectives in nature-inspired design, we argue that assessing environmental sustainability is not straightforward. Whereas both Biomimicry and Cradle to Cradle build on the perspective of ‘achieving sustainability’, current life-cycle assessment-based tools are geared towards reducing current impacts. As a consequence, existing tools are insufficiently equipped for the purpose of the assessment: they do not cover some of the main results that nature-inspired design is set out to accomplish. To be able to include these results, we propose two new constituents to current life-cycle-based product assessment: assessing against conditions of sustainability and assessing ‘achievement’, the extent to which these conditions of sustainability have been achieved. Furthermore, the product context needs to be included for assessing beneficial impacts. This article discusses how these constituents can contribute to an assessment tool that enables designers and engineers to assess the development of environmentally sustainable solutions.     

Towards an umbrella science of sustainability

Sustainability research has gained scholarly attention since the 1980s as the new science investigating the changes in social, environmental and economic systems and their impacts on the future of planetary life support systems. Whilst broad literature on sustainability has expanded significantly over the past decades, academic literature developing sustainability as a distinct science has received little attention. After more than two decades of sustainability research, the time has come for us to begin asking reflective questions about what sort of science we call sustainability science. How has the broader research on sustainability contributed to developing sustainability science as a unique discipline within the past two decades? How has the label science promoted or hindered the interdisciplinary project of integrating the natural and social sciences as well as arts and humanities in addressing human nature problems? I argue in this review paper that special efforts need to be made towards the building and positioning of sustainability as an umbrella science for global sustainability research. The benefits of the new sustainability science advocated for in this paper are that; a) it offers a universal definition of sustainability that accounts for both the needs of life and the capacity of planetary life support systems to provide for those needs and b) proposes ways of bridging gaps among different research traditions, facilitating cross disciplinary communication and addressing the challenge of multiple meanings and definitions of concepts facing sustainability research today.     

中国西部地区可持续能力透视

本文基于目前可持续发展领域的研究成果,对中国区域,尤其是西部地区的可持续能力进行评估,从整体的高度诊断出西部地区可持续发展的制约因素和障碍,并就增强 事的可持续能力提出几点建议,以此为中开发决策奠定了一些理论基础。