A metrics-based methodology for establishing Product Sustainability Index (ProdSI) for manufactured products

Abstract

The paper presents a new methodology for generating the five-level Product Sustainability Index (ProdSI) based on a set of product sustainability metrics. The evaluation method includes processes of data normalization, weighting and aggregation. Data normalization is applied to convert measured physical data into dimensionless scores that each metric specifies. Weighting factors are assigned and the priority evaluation methodologies are discussed. The normalized data is aggregated to generate a ProdSI score to represent the actual sustainability content in the product. Finally, a demonstration of the methodology is presented with a numerical example.