Ergonomics-Based Factors or Criteria for the Evaluation of Sustainable Product Manufacturing

Abstract

The issue of sustainability has received substantial attention internationally. It is spreading widely through policy, industry, commerce, research, academia, and other arenas. However, most previous studies on product sustainability were conducted based on a consideration of environmental protection, economic prosperity, and social wellbeing criteria, but there was less representation of specific social wellbeing criteria. The main objective of this study was to formulate well-defined ergonomics-based criteria for product sustainability evaluation and to validate the importance of the identified factors using a fuzzy Delphi method. In this paper, ergonomics-based product sustainability factors are organized by sustainability categories and grouped into employee wellbeing, the economy, and the environment. In the context of manufacturing, evaluating product sustainability from an ergonomics perspective provides more comprehensive social dimension criteria by addressing human characteristics, behavior, performance, human interaction with a product, workplace, working environment, and the product across its life cycle. In addition, a Delphi questionnaire, designed with a nine-point scale, was applied to obtain expert opinions on the importance of each factor; the opinions were combined for each factor by considering the degree of importance assigned to the experts, and the similarities and differences between expert opinions. Finally, high-priority factors were screened from the sustainability categories based on their respective threshold value. Knowing these high-priority factors will help manufacturing industries allocate their resources accordingly for sustainability improvement.

Role of Ergonomic Factors Affecting Production of Leather Garment-Based SMEs of India: Implications for Social Sustainability

“…As largely known, the sustainability concept covers three areas, including economic, environmental, and social areas. However, most industrial perspectives note their primary concern as economically sustainable success in financial markets [8]. Due to pressure from the customers for sustainable manufacturing practices and to meet the government's environmental norms, the manufacturing sector has necessarily started to concentrate on matters of environmental and social sustainability [9].…”

Development of Sustainability Indicators for Employee-Activity Based Production Process Using Fuzzy Delphi Method

“…In our previous work by Lin et al [9] a total of 40 sustainability indictors or factors were developed based on the interaction of product with the society. The importance level of these indicators was investigated by experts (management decision makers).…”

“…Even though there is a slow start with the ergonomics community with consideration to sustainability, more recently there has been rising interest and some actions taken to strengthen the need [29,30]. For example, Cao et al [5] provided sustainability framework based on ergonomics that focused on a social pillar of sustainability, whereas in our previous studies Lin et al [9] emphasized/focused on the interaction of products with the society across the total product life cycle and guide the industries to produce sustainable products. The present study specifically considered employee as the center of the study with the objective of investigating indicators that make the environment of production processes more suitable for improving health and wellbeing, motivation and satisfaction, and performance of the employee.…”

A Two-Step Fuzzy MCDM Method for Implementation of Sustainable Precision Manufacturing: Evidence from China

“…Two MCDM methods were used to calculate the effect of drivers and obtain the ranking and the results, which indicated that the top management plays the most significant role among all drivers. Lin et al [28] proposed that the method of fuzzy Delphi questionnaire analysis was applied to study drivers of sustainability, with the drivers including "product safety, user satisfaction, product quality, product serviceability, and product usability demand priority". The main perspective of the research was the economy's sustainable development.…”

“…In terms of improving the precision of parts or products, these manufacturing methods can be summarized as [3,[24][25][26][27]: composite energy field-assisted manufacturing, extreme manufacturing technologies with near-atomic-level precision for material removal, ultra-precision additive manufacturing, and atomic-level in situ processing and detection technology. From the perspective of improving the intelligence and flexibility of precision manufacturing systems, there are [3,28,29]: the Internet of Things, cloud computing, digital twins, CAD/CAD/CAM technology, etc. The emergence of these advanced manufacturing technologies and intelligent manufacturing technologies will have a profound impact on sustainable precision manufacturing.…”