A Fuzzy Logic-Based Tool for the Assessment of Corporate Sustainability: A Case Study in the Food Machinery Industry

Abstract

This paper develops a quantitative tool for the assessment of sustainability at the company's level, taking into account its three key perspectives, i.e., economic, environmental and social. The proposed framework is grounded on fuzzy logic and in particular on a monotonic hierarchical fuzzy inference tool, as an effective means to gather the judgements and scores against the key performance indicators (KPIs) of each sustainability perspective into an aggregated index. In developing the fuzzy inference tool, we also solve some typical issues related to the assessment of sustainability, e.g., the identification of benchmark values to rate the company's performance against each sustainability KPI. The architecture of the fuzzy inference tool was embodied in an ad hoc software developed in Microsoft Excel TM (Microsoft Corporation, Albuquerque, NM, USA), which makes it easy to use the proposed framework in practical situations. The potential of the software tool developed is illustrated by means of a case study, targeting a food machinery company, for which the overall evaluation of sustainability is carried out.

Sustainable Environmental Management System Integration and Business Performance: A Balance Assessment Approach Using Fuzzy Logic

“…Sustainability issues could be considered the future of tomorrow [1][2][3]. Organizational sustainability approaches can be defined as "a consensual solution of stakeholders who are involved in the business decision-making process" [4], taking into account the synergy between enhancing (i) ecological resilience, (ii) people, and (iii) profit [5].…”

Benchmarking of contributory organisations within the framework of technical efficiency

“…Other important research should be mentioned, i.e. by Bottani et al (2017) who assessed sustainability at the organisation's level considering three key perspectives -economic, environmental and social -based on fuzzy logic and, in particular, on a monotonic hierarchical fuzzy inference tool as an effective means to gather the judgements and scores against the key performance indicators (KPIs) of each sustainability perspective into an aggregated index. Chodakowska and Nazarko (2016) presented the concept of environmental efficiency analysis based on the DEA in the case of desirable and undesirable results and illustrated by a case study of European countries.…”

Multi-Criteria Measurement of Sustainable Innovativeness in Farming Organisations: Evidence from Lithuania

“…Mostly scientists address different assessment aspects in the fields of industrial production [11][12][13], and construction technologies [13][14][15]. It is difficult to see why, but in this respect, agribusiness is placed at a disadvantage: There is no targeted methodology or universal methods for measuring innovativeness that could be adapted for this specific business sector.…”

“…For example, some authors [16] proponents of multi-criteria methods for maintenance performance measurement, criticise decision-making following on from the results of measurements based on a single largest financial criterion [12,17]. Researchers in some publications also agree that multi-criteria methods in assessment of construction projects produce a more objective result [3,4,13,18]. The multi-criteria farm sustainable innovativeness measurement model proposed by us ( Figure 1) is based on the method of complex proportional assessment (COPRAS) suggested by authors, who proved the relevance of this method in assessing social phenomena [18].…”