Sustainability Performance Of Industry Research Articles

Linking Digital Servitization and Industrial Sustainability Performance: A Configurational Perspective on Smart Solution Strategies

Linking Digital Servitization and Industrial Sustainability Performance: A Configurational Perspective on Smart Solution Strategies

Metrics for measuring industrial sustainability performance in small and medium-sized enterprises

PurposeThis paper aims to identify and empirically analyze useful and applicable metrics for measuring and managing the sustainability performance of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).Design/methodology/approachTo achieve the objective of the paper, potential metrics were adopted from previous research related to industrial sustainability and an empirical analysis was carried to assess the applicability of the metrics by collecting empirical data from Italian footwear SMEs using a structured questionnaire. The SMEs were selected using a convenience sampling method.FindingsThe results of the within-case analysis and the cross-case analysis indicate that the majority of the metrics were found to be useful and applicable to each of the SMEs and across the SMEs, respectively. These metrics emphasized measuring industrial sustainability performance related to financial benefits, costs and market competitiveness for the economic sustainability dimension; resources for the environmental sustainability dimension; and customers, employees and the community for the social sustainability dimension.Research limitations/implicationsApart from the within-case analysis and cross-case analysis, it was not possible to conduct statistical analysis since a small number of SMEs were accessible to collect empirical data.Originality/valueThe findings of the paper have considerable academic, managerial and policy implications and will provide a theoretical basis for future research on measuring and managing industrial sustainability performance. By providing a set of empirically supported metrics based on the triple bottom line approach (i.e. economic, environmental and social metrics), this paper contributes to the existing knowledge in the field of industrial sustainability performance measurement.

Tailoring sustainability indicators to small and medium enterprises for measuring industrial sustainability performance

PurposeThe lack of suitable indicators tailored to manufacturing industries’ needs, particularly to small and medium enterprises (SMEs), has been the major challenge to measure and manage industrial sustainability performance. This paper aims to empirically analyze and select the useful and applicable indicators to measure sustainability performance in the context of SMEs.Design/methodology/approachA systematic review was carried out to identify potential sustainability indicators from the literature. A questionnaire was designed based on the identified indicators and then pretested with the selected industrial experts, scholars, and researchers to further refine the indicators before data collection from the Italian footwear SMEs. Fuzzy Delphi method with consistency aggregation method was applied to analyze and select the final indicators.FindingsThe study’s findings show that the selected indicators emphasized measuring progress toward achieving industrial sustainability goals in terms of increasing financial benefits, reducing costs, improving market competitiveness, improving the effectiveness of resources utilization, and promoting the well-being of employees, customers and the community. In doing so, Italian footwear SMEs can contribute to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by promoting health and well-being, promoting sustainable economic growth, providing productive employment and decent work, and ensuring responsible consumption and production.Social implicationsThe results of this study have significant social implications in terms of promoting the well-being of employees, customers, and the community.Originality/valueBy providing empirically supported indicators tailored to measure and manage sustainability performance in the context of SMEs, this paper contributes to the existing knowledge in the field of industrial sustainability performance measurement. Furthermore, it links the selected indicators to their respective SDGs to provide policy implications.

Indicators and Framework for Measuring Industrial Sustainability in Italian Footwear Small and Medium Enterprises

As small and medium enterprises (SMEs) have limited resources, they need a manageable number of indicators that are simple and easy to use for measuring sustainability performance. However, the lack of suitable indicators tailored to industry needs, particularly for SMEs, has been a major challenge in measuring and managing industrial sustainability. Our study aims to empirically analyze and select the useful and applicable indicators to measure sustainability performance in Italian footwear SMEs. To achieve this objective, we proposed a methodological approach to identify, analyze and select sustainability indicators. First, we carried out a systematic review to identify potential sustainability indicators from the literature. Then, we developed a questionnaire based on the identified indicators and pre-tested it with selected industrial experts, scholars, and researchers to further refine the indicators before collecting data. We applied the fuzzy Delphi method to analyze and select the final indicators. Based on a sample of 48 Italian footwear SMEs, the results of our study show that product quality, material consumption, and customer satisfaction were the top priorities among the selected indicators for measuring the economic, environmental, and social dimensions of industrial sustainability, respectively. The selected indicators stressed the measuring of industrial sustainability performance associated with financial benefits, costs, market competitiveness, resources, customers, employees, and the community. Our study proposed a framework that helps to apply the selected indicators for measuring sustainability performance in SMEs. Finally, our study contributes to the existing theory and knowledge of industrial sustainability performance measurement by providing indicators supported by empirical evidence and a framework to put the indicators into practice in the context of SMEs.

Industrial Internet of Things enabled supply-side energy modelling for refined energy management in aluminium extrusions manufacturing

To improve industrial sustainability performance in manufacturing, energy management and optimisation are key levers. This is particularly true for aluminium extrusions manufacturing —an energy-intensive production system with considerable environmental impacts. Many energy management and optimisation approaches have been studied to relieve such negative impact. However, the effectiveness of these approaches is compromised without the support of refined supply-side energy consumption information. Industrial internet of things provides opportunities to acquire refined energy consumption information in its data-rich environment but also poses a range of difficulties in implementation. The existing sensors cannot directly obtain the energy consumption at the granularity of a specific job. To acquire that refined energy consumption information, a supply-side energy modelling method based on existing industrial internet of things devices for energy-intensive production systems is proposed in this paper. First, the job-specified production event concept is proposed, and the layout of the data acquisition network is designed to obtain the event elements. Second, the mathematical models are developed to calculate the energy consumption of the production event in three process modes. Third, the energy consumption information of multiple manufacturing element dimensions can be derived from the mathematical models, and therefore, the energy consumption information on multiple dimensions is easily scaled. Finally, a case of refined energy cost accounting is studied to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed models.

Industrial sustainability performance measurement systems: A novel framework

Improved sustainability of industrial activities and measurement of its performance are becoming prime topics of discussion among policy-makers and industrial decision-makers. The current literature proposes a number of performance measurement systems and related indicators, but mainly lacks a real capability to address all sustainability pillars and their intersections, as well as scalability to firms of different sizes, availability of internal resources, and maturity over sustainability issues, suggesting that further research is needed in this area. Building on the literature, our work develops a new framework for the evaluation of industrial sustainability performance, proposing three different Industrial Sustainability Performance Measurement Systems (ISPMSs), with a decreasing number of indicators suitable in different contexts of application. In the framework, selection mechanisms have been conceived and used to reduce the number of indicators considered, while still guaranteeing complete and adequate coverage of all sustainability pillars, as well as their intersections. The framework has been tested through semi-structured case studies in heterogeneous Northern Italian manufacturing firms. The preliminary results are sound as the different ISPMSs proved to be complete, useful, and easy to use. The proposed ISPMSs provide industrial decision-makers with a scalable framework applicable in different contexts, allowing benchmarking and development of specific implementation strategies for increased sustainability, and provide policy-makers with a framework to develop a more effective regulatory policy, better understanding how sustainability performance can be addressed in an integrated manner across industrial firms.

Measuring industrial sustainability performance: Empirical evidence from Italian and German manufacturing small and medium enterprises

Measuring industrial sustainability performance in manufacturing firms is still a major challenge for both policy and industrial decision makers, with many firms, particularly small and medium enterprises, struggling to properly engage with them. Hence, to understand the level of adoption of industrial sustainability indicators and the issues preventing their effective measurement, and stimulate further research in this area, a multiple case analysis of 26 small and medium manufacturing enterprises across Germany and Italy operating in the chemical and metalworking sectors was conducted. The findings show that only 18 indicators are in place on average. Furthermore, too many firms still focus almost exclusively on the economic pillar of sustainability, while social and environmental pillars are addressed almost exclusively for compliance with legislation. Moreover, the research suggests that contextual factors may influence the firms’ perspective on sustainability and the way it is managed, as well as the certifications held by firms, influencing, in turn, the number and types of indicators considered. An exploratory investigation allowed identification of several important open issues, leading to future research avenues, and in particular towards the development of a novel model to gauge sustainability in industrial activities, as well as adoption of policy-making measures for further emphasis on environmental and social pillars when promoting the adoption of sustainability indicators.

Nonradial Directional Distance Function for Measuring the Environmental Efficiency of the Chinese Iron and Steel Industry

The present article constructs nonradial directional distance function (DDF) methods to measure and contribute to improving the industrial sustainability performance of the Chinese iron and steel industry. For such an energy-intensive industry, environmental efficiency measurement is an important way to implement the “energy-saving and emission-reduction” principle. We reformulate the nonradial DDF in the form of Second-Order Cone Programming in order to transform the traditional DDF into linear programming and provide accurate efficiency results. The new approach is utilized to calculate the performance of 30 major iron and steel makers in China. Both technical efficiency and overall efficiency are calculated to help the managers of inefficient iron and steelmakers find weaknesses. We find that nearly half of the steel makers are environmental inefficient, most of which are increasing return to scale. Furthermore, specific value of desirable output increase and undesirable output reduction are calculated for achieving efficiency. The study concludes with some remarks for energy-environment policy and industrial decision makers based on the empirical analysis and makes comparison study between the policies obtained in this study and the existing government policies.

A method for economic input-output social impact analysis with application to U.S. advanced manufacturing

Industrial sustainability performance has, up until recently, been mainly based on a combination of economic and environmental measures. The social dimension of sustainability performance remains largely unknown. The lack of understanding of social performance, i.e., how stakeholder needs are impacted by industrial production, limits the capacity of decision makers to pursue fully informed choices. Fortunately, large quantities of economic and social data exist in the public domain. The vast economic and social data enable the creation of industry-related social impact metrics that can describe how industry directly affects society. However, assessing social impacts in an economy requires a multidisciplinary modeling approach. The proposed method, economic input-output social impact assessment, is developed to integrate economic production with two new social impact metrics based on employee/worker-needs: Cost Of Injuries identifies employee safety/security needs, and Employees below a Living Wage identifies worker basic needs. The model is applied using a case study that introduces the economically important and technologically innovative Advanced Manufacturing cluster of industries in the United States. In 2012, Advanced Manufacturing represented over 39% of U.S. manufacturing output and 7.8%, or $2.25 trillion. of the U.S. total economic output ranking 6th in the total economy. As a result of the model, Advanced Manufacturing was attributed 8.5%, or $1.3 billion, for the total national social impacts of Cost Of Injuries, ranking 5th in the U.S. economy. Advanced Manufacturing was also attributed 3.5%, or 3 million employees, for the total national social impacts of Employees below a Living Wage, ranking 12th out of the 16 economic sectors studied. The economic input-output social impact assessment method is demonstrated to provide a measurable path forward to evaluate the social performance of industries.

Broadening to sustainability the perspective of industrial decision-makers on the energy efficiency measures adoption: some empirical evidence

The industry should take further efforts towards increased energy efficiency, that is a major contributor to improve industrial sustainability performance, by implementing energy efficiency measures (EEMs). However, the rate of adoption of these measures is still quite low. Hitherto, EEMs and barriers to their adoption have been evaluated almost exclusively from the viewpoint of energy efficiency decision-makers, not accounting for the broader sustainability perspective. This work aims at understanding whether an industrial sustainability perspective can better address issues related to EEMs adoption, analyzing the question through different viewpoints and insights offered by industrial decision-makers of different industrial sustainability areas within a firm. By doing this, we aim at offering a contribution in the understanding of the low rate of adoption of EEMs. As case studies, we investigated 12 firms from Northern Italy. In comparison to previous literature, results show that an industrial sustainability perspective can better explain the real decision-making process of adopting an EEM. Indeed, people knowledgeable about different industrial sustainability areas may perceive different barriers about the same EEM. EEMs may be negatively affected by reasons related to other areas of industrial sustainability, while positive reciprocal impacts may exist among areas of industrial sustainability; thus, EEMs may have effects on areas other than energy efficiency, and these effects may be perceived only by such areas. The study concludes with some remarks for policy and industrial decision-makers and advice for further research.

Sustainability in the Turkish retailing industry

AbstractRetailing is a diverse and dynamic industry offering a wide range of goods and services to consumers.There is also an increasing recognition that this corporate retail power is the driving force for the whole of the supply chain. Due to these facts, it is argued that retailing companies have a huge potential to impact on sustainability performance of national economies. In order to materialize this potential, performance in sustainability should be assessed, and evaluating sustainability performance of an industry requires developing a system of performance evaluation framework. In the context of sustainable development, selecting proper sustainability indicators are one of the most crucial steps to fulfill performance evaluations. Since there has been no attempt to develop proper sustainability indicators in retailing industry, this paper aims to select appropriate indicators for future evaluation of industrial sustainability performance for grocery retailing in terms of three sustainability aspects: social, environmental and economic. To this end, (1) a comprehensive analysis of the existing literature was done, (2) and Analytic Hierarchy Process/Weighted Additive model‐based table was developed to rank the indicators for each aspect, (3) the input for the tables was obtained from rapidly growing grocery retailing industry in Turkey by conducting surveys, and (4) using the average values of the tables, sustainability indicators for each aspect were ranked and the most appropriate ones were selected. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.