Can Companies Assess Sustainable Manufacturing Practice?

Abstract

While firms actively try to adopt sustainable manufacturing practices, no assessment framework has been readily available for them to measure and manage their production efforts for sustainability. In this study, an assessment framework for a firm’s sustainable manufacturing is developed, and applied to the case of a major chemical company in Korea. Detailed assessment criteria are proposed based on reviews of the latest literature, and the scoring results of the company are presented. In addition to resource saving and environmental sustainability, the socio-economic impacts of the manufacturing industry are captured and evaluated in the framework. The case study and assessment results show that the company has innovative technologies and management practices, while it must still achieve larger-scale outcomes in environmental as well as social dimensions. This paper further contributes to advancing sustainable manufacturing by demonstrating a method for measuring a firm’s status with respect to sustainable manufacturing and a concrete case for other companies to utilize in their initiatives in this area.