Model-based approach for assessing value creation to enhance sustainability in manufacturing

Increasing global competition requires technological innovation with new political, commercial and technical advances empowered by market dynamics. These challenges must be met with appropriate decision-making by manufacturing companies to secure competitive advantage without compromising sustainability. This requires decision-makers to seize opportunities for improving sustainable solutions in strategic and operational activities. Various scientific and case-based methods are applied to measure the performance and sustainability level of manufacturing systems. However, embedding sustainability in decision-making has not been fully realized by academics and practitioners. This paper introduces a model-based approach for assessing value creation to enhance manufacturing sustainability. The major objective of the approach is to evaluate the strategic alignment and sustainability of the solutions to overcome a challenge related with a product, process or equipment in manufacturing. The approach proposes a framework that transforms customer requirements first into descriptive attributes to assign the value for strategic alignment and later into comprehensive metrics to measure the sustainability value. The approach provides decision-makers with a method of comparing sustainable value addition and strategic alignment when evaluating alternatives. In a case-based application, the production equipment of a service provider is evaluated to select the option that adds the most value, both strategically and sustainably, to meet customer requirements. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V.