Authors

Department of Industrial Engineering, Najafabad Branch, Islamic Azad University, Isfahan, Iran

Abstract

Sustainable production is using non-polluting processes and systems by considering energy conservation and natural resources, which is sustainable in terms of economic, safety and health for employees, society and consumers. In general sustainable production refers to valuable social production for all working people. There are different perspectives on sustainable production indicators. However, some recent researches offered indicators for measuring sustainable production. Increasing the number of indicators causes managers’ confusion in using them.  This paper offers a fuzzy inference system for indicators ranking in organizations. In this study, general prioritizations regardless of the type of manufacturing industry were considered and effort was focused on showing the relative degree of indicators for managers. So that it offers good understanding about importance of each indicator with regard to others for assessmenting the past, present and future of organizations. The results of the present study shows that beside economy, specialists have great attention on the environmental issues which is important and necessary for manufacturing in protecting natural resources and environments.

Keywords

Amindoust, A., Ahmed, S., Saghafinia, A. and Bahreininejad, A. (2012). “Sustainable supplier selection: A ranking model based on fuzzy inference system”. Applied Soft Computing. Vol. 12, No. 6, pp. 1668–1677.
Asan, U., Erhan Bozdag, C., and Polat, S. (2004). “A fuzzy approach to qualitative cross impact analysis”. Omega – International Journal of Management Science. Vol. 32, No. 6, pp. 443– 458.
Boër, C.R. and Jovane, F. (1996). “Towards a New Model of Sustainable Production: ManuFuturing”. CIRP Annals - Manufacturing Technology. Vol. 45, No. 1, pp. 415–420.
Bozbura, F.T. and Beskese, A. (2007). “Prioritization of organizational capital measurement indicators using fuzzy AHP”. International Journal of Approximate Reasoning. Vol. 44, No. 2, pp. 124–147.
Bozbura, F.T., Beskese, A. and Kahraman, C. (2007). “Prioritization of human capital measurement indicators using fuzzy AHP”. Expert Systems with Applications. Vol. 32, No. 4, pp. 1100–1112.
Dibella, A. and Nevis, E. (1998). How Organizations Learn: An Integrated Strategy for Building Learning Capability. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Press.
Farrell, A. and Hart, M. (1998). “What does sustainability really mean?”. Environment. Vol. 40, No. 9, pp. 5–31.
Guimaraes, F.A.C. and Lapa, C.M.F. (2004). “Nuclear transient phase ranking table using fuzzy inference system”. Annals of Nuclear Energy. Vol. 31, No. 15, pp. 1803–1812.
Han, D. and Han, I. (2004). “Prioritization and selection of intellectual capital measurement indicators using analytic hierarchy process for the mobile telecommunications industry”. Expert Systems with Applications. Vol. 26, No. 4, pp. 519–527.
Khanlari, A., Mohammadi, K. and Sohrabi, B. (2008). “Prioritizing equipments for preventive maintenance (PM) activities using fuzzy rules”. Computers & Industrial Engineering. Vol. 54, No. 2, pp. 169–184.
Lowell Center for Sustainable Production (1998) Sustainable Production: A Working Definition. Informal Meeting of the Committee Members.
Mamdani, E.H., (1974). “Applications of fuzzy algorithms for simple dynamic plant”. Proceedings of the IEEE. Vol. 121, No. 12, pp. 1585–1588.
Mehralian, G., Rasekh, H.R., Akhavan, P. and Ghatari, A.R. (2013). “Prioritization of intellectual capital indicators in knowledge-based industries: Evidence from pharmaceutical industry”. International Journal of Information Management. Vol. 33, No. 2, pp. 209–216.
O’Brien, C. (1999). “Sustainable production – a new paradigm for a new millennium”. International Journal Production Economics. Vol. 60–61, No. 1, pp. 1–7.
Quinn, M., Kriebel. D., Geiser, K. and Moure-Eraso, R. (1998). “Sustainable production: A proposed strategy for the work environment”. American Journal of Industrial Medicine. Vol. 34, No. 4, pp. 297–394.
Ranganathan, J. (1998). Sustainability Rulers: Measuring Corporate Environmental and Social Performance. Sustainable Enterprise Perspectives. World Resource Institute: Washington, DC, Retrieved from:http://www.wri.org/meb/pdf/janet/pdf
Tseng, M.L. (2013). “Modeling sustainable production indicators with linguistic preferences”. Journal of Cleaner Production. Vol. 40, No. 1, pp. 46-56.
Tseng, M.L., Divinagracia, L. and Divinagracia, R., (2009). “Evaluating firm’s sustainable production indicators in uncertainty”. Comput. Ind. Eng. Vol. 57, No. 4, pp. 1393–1403.
Veleva, V. and Ellenbecker, M. (2001). “Indicators of sustainable production: framework and methodology”. Journal of Cleaner Production. Vol. 9, No. 6, pp. 519–549.
Vollmann, T. (1996). The transformation imperative: achieving market dominance through radical change. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press.
Von Altrock, C. (1996). Fuzzy logic and neurofuzzy applications in business and finance, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall. Zadeh, L.A. (1965). “Fuzzy set”. Information and Control. Vol. 8, No. 3, pp.338–353.