An integrated methodology based on sustainability concepts for assessment production processes efficiencyimplementation procedure

Resumo

Despite the growing importance that is being given to the concepts of sustainability in many areas, not only in industry but also in the economy and public opinion in general, until now, most research has focused, practically, on the analysis of the concepts, but has not addressed, in a comprehensive way, the process of evaluation and decision making in the complex relations of interdependence between its different aspects that they have. Therefore, the application of a sustainability assessment methodology that improves the decision-making process, allowing for a conscious and transparent assessment by managers and decision-makers at the different levels of a company's hierarchical structure, seems appropriate. The main purpose of this research is to provide a comprehensive method or a suitable tool for evaluating manufacturing companies based on the concepts of sustainability, and the implementation test of this method is based on real and / or virtual lines of manufacturing companies, that achieving this goal requires the implementation of the following sub-objectives: - Attention to the indicators that covered the social, environmental and productive aspects, and identification and selection the most important of them and their composed components. - Presentation a Sustainability Index Function (SIF) formula to assess the costs of triple aspects in the manufacturing companies. This formula is configured based on the quantitative and available indicators, and feeding through the real data extracted from manufacturing companies, and also the data of production lines simulated with software such as SIMIO. - Introducing and calculation the coefficient related to each aspect of sustainability, which the calculations of them did based on the steps of TOPSIS method. In fact, this investigation explains the development and application of an integrated methodology for evaluation of manufacturing process that called Sustainability Assessment Methodology (SAM), with an approach that allows the integration of economic, environmental and social criteria. Road map of this methodology is based on the simultaneous use of various techniques and tools that allow the importance of each aspect of sustainability to be quantified in each case. The methodology is applied by means of a simple and easy to understand and use function, which helps to make operational, tactical and strategic decisions in the management of manufacturing companies. To validation, this method has been applied in the different production environments, being implemented in different manufacturing systems to analysis their ease of use, evaluate their behaviour and offer results that enable conscious and sustainable decision-making. This methodology is a useful tool to help be more efficient, fair, supportive and environmentally friendly in the design, planning and manufacturing control processes. Note that the proposed method in this research is a tool to help the decision-making process at different levels of management of the company hierarchy and the obtained results of aforementioned method are based on the concepts of virtual cell, sustainable production and social responsibility of the company.