Development of a management tool for assessing environmental performance in SMEs' design and production

Abstract

Small and medium sized manufacturers offer opportunities in reducing life cycle impacts, as green demand cascades through supply chains, and challenges due to their lack of environmental management and life cycle engineering skills. This research explored existing management tools to meet manufacturing SMEs reported need for self assessment. Drawing on the principles of environmental performance evaluation, this paper presents the development and application of a spreadsheet tool for diagnosing environmental performance in SMEs' product design and production and relates it to the tools used recently in the UK by Perform and Benchmark Index and the ecoBiz assessment used in Australia.