Sustainability Assessment of Environmentally Conscious Manufacturing Companies

Abstract

Sustainable manufacturing is becoming increasingly important with substantial social, environmental and economic benefits, thus companies show more tendency to adopt this concept. Recognizing the benefits of sustainability, manufacturing companies need to measure how sustainable they perform. However, sustainability can be thought as an abstract issue which is difficult to measure and also assess. Measuring sustainability is a continuously evolving research area which generates various sustainability indicators to assess companies' production activities. Practically, while evaluating the sustainability performance of a manufacturing system, various indicators should be considered simultaneously. This study focuses on the usage of sustainability indicators to assess the sustainability of a production company from a multi-criteria decision making point of view. As a case study, the sustainability performances of an international beverage company which produces non-alcoholic drinks were evaluated. TOPSIS method was adopted as an assessment method with the use of several conflicting indicators simultaneously.