Multi-criteria decision support for sustainability assessment of manufacturing system reuse

Abstract

Society seeks greater development by building infrastructures in the cities. In order to achieve that, on many occasions, there has been inadequate use of natural resources, leading to adverse consequences such as the increase of greenhouse gases (GHGs), which are known to be one of the main polluting agents that accelerate climate change.Environmental care is important to business management; therefore, through its protection and continuous improvement, it seeks to contribute to the optimization of the economic performance of the country.The feasibility of an "Environmental Management Plan" was studied. It aims at making the El Jardín headquarters at UNAB environmentally sustainable by proposing three projects: solar panels, rainwater harvesting, and a green roof system. The economic, social and environmental result of the plan was evaluated; and it was posed to develop a transversal program of environmental culture for the "UNAB" community.The analysis showed that 40m 3 harvested rainwater can save up to 11% of consumption. The assembly and implementation of 282 solar panels can decrease 9.39% of total consumption. Similarly, 208 m 2 of green roof can lower the energy consumption by 702.67 kWh. The projects were agreed to be environmentally and socially viable, but they were not found financially and economically favorable.To sum up, a program of environmental culture is posed aiming at strengthening the knowledge and environmental awareness of the university community. The implementation of the proposed Environmental Management Plan would contribute to the environmental sustainability of the UNAB.

On the Applicability of Sustainability Assessment Tools in Manufacturing

“…However, most of the tools are developed for specific products, processes, or parts of manufacturing system. Examples of such tools include: sustainability assessment of manufacturing system reuse based on Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) [25]; evaluation of product based on fuzzy comprehensive assessment method [26]; sustainability performance measurement for product life cycle [8]; integrating sustainable manufacturing assessment for a production workcell based on AHP and multi-criteria-decisionmaking method [27]; a matrix evaluation model for sustainability assessment of manufacturing technologies [28]; sustainability assessment framework for remanufacturing industry [29]; and Product Sustainability Assessment (PROSA) [30]. Although, some sustainability assessment tools are developed for a specific industry, it is possible to use them in other industries.…”

“…Examples include, among others, an activity-based, object-oriented method for sustainability assessment of manufactured parts during manufacturing phase of life [20], sustainability assessment of manufacturing process of Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID)-based systems [21], sustainability assessment of manufacturing flow for a new component [22], manufacturing environmental performance evaluation [23], sustainability assessment based on a mixed integer linear programming model [24]. One of the research groups states that most available assessment tools focus on environmental aspects of manufacturing system sustainability [25].…”

Quick Green Scan: A Methodology for Improving Green Performance in Terms of Manufacturing Processes

“…Most of the assessment tools are developed for a specific product rather than manufacturing processes, or parts of a manufacturing system [54]. Some part of them is focused on manufacturing environmental performance evaluation with indicators for product and process assessment [55][56][57]. Each method has its own uniqueness and accuracy due to the assumptions and information used.…”

Evaluation of Corporate Sustainability

“…A number of studies have also attempted to construct a composite index of the overall sustainability performance which can be used to compare and track the progress of a company toward sustainable development (Hubbard, 2009;Krajnc & Glavic, 2005a, 2005bLi, Zhang, Yuan, Liu, & Fan, 2012;Phillis & Davis, 2009;Tseng, Divinagracia L., & Divinagracia R., 2009;Ugwu, Kumaraswamy, Wong, & Ng, 2006;Ziout, Azab, Altarazi, & ElMaraghy, 2013). In these studies, methods akin to the additive value function approach, in particular the simple additive weighting (SAW) method, are mainly employed to aggregate indicators.…”