Sustainable Practices in Manufacturing: Energy Efficiency in Production and the Development of Green Performance Measurement Indicators

摘要

Energy efficiency is one of the significant drivers for sustainability and its importance has grown within manufacturing environments. It is now considered among one of the decision making factors such as cost, productivity and flexibility. Though, in most of the cases the energy intake of the various co mponents of the manufacturing systems like machine tools, are considered using average to very high energy consumption models in the manufacturing sector. This Research paper presents an overview of the various energy efficiency approaches, concentrating in both the production and the machine tool level and further discussing how these two can be integrated together. In addition, the main challenges that arise towards the energy ef ficient manufacturing in the present day are discussed identifying the main barriers from both the technology and the cultural point of view. This research paper also developed three different sets of green performance measurement indicators. The first are with respect to strategic, tactical and operational aspects in the enterprise, the second set of indicators are developed through the three aspects of sustainability namely environmental, social and economic aspects. The third set of green performance ind icators were developed by considering the whole reverse supply chain concept in the enterprise. Also the importance and implementation of these indicators in the performance measurement system was discussed. Even though there hav e been studies on the implementation of green performance measurement system indicators in the enterprise for improved environmental performance, yet there has not been a co mprehensive stud y in the performance measures with different perspective for their implementation. This research paper aims in filling that gap,in an attempt to discuss the need for energy efficiency in manufacturing and the development of green performance measurement indicators with its implementation in the enterpriseto increase not only the environmental efficiency but also its competitiveness among manufacturers