Social Sustainability in technologically-supported product realisation process

Abstract

The social aspect of sustainable manufacturing is not as well addressed as the environmental and economical. This paper is an exploratory study to consider this neglected aspect of sustainability. One problem addressed in the paper is the lack of consensus on the several frameworks, methods and standards proposed for social sustainability (such as Social Life cycle Assessment, S-LCA). A coherent framework is proposed and used to evaluate the social sustainability impacts of technology support applied in the product lifecycle. Social effects on technical skill improvement/impairment, judgment and situational awareness are identified using the framework and how to evaluate these social effects are proposed. An interesting result is that social sustainability also leads to environmental sustainability (e.g. situational awareness leads to energy awareness) and economic sustainability. This may indicate that sustainability consideration may be more effective by starting from the social aspect-i.e. a socially responsible/sustainable product/system/service/lifecycle is necessarily environmentally and economically responsible as well.