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Sustainability assessment procedure for operations and production processes (SUAPRO)
Feni Agostinho1, Thames Richard Silva2, Cecília M V B Almeida3
1Post-graduation Program on Production Engineering, Paulista University (UNIP), Brazil; School of Environment, Beijing Normal University, China.
The Science of the Total Environment
|August 9, 2019
Summary
A new framework, the Sustainability Assessment Procedure for Operations and Production Processes (SUAPRO), offers a scientifically-based method for evaluating system sustainability. SUAPRO demonstrated railroad transport for soybeans is more sustainable than road transport.
Area of Science:
- Environmental Science
- Industrial Engineering
- Operations Research
Background:
- Current sustainability assessments often lack scientific rigor and appropriate indicators.
- Existing methods struggle to represent the complex concept of sustainability effectively.
- There is a need for a structured, scientifically-grounded framework for sustainability assessment in production systems.
Purpose of the Study:
- To introduce a novel, scientifically-based framework for sustainability assessment: the Sustainability Assessment Procedure for Operations and Production Processes (SUAPRO).
- To integrate the PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act) management method and the five sectors sustainability (5SEnSU) model into a comprehensive assessment procedure.
- To provide a replicable methodology for evaluating the sustainability of production systems and informing decision-making.
Main Methods:
- Developed the SUAPRO framework, incorporating system contextualization, indicator selection using the 5SEnSU model, and multicriteria quantification via goal programming.
- Applied SUAPRO to a case study comparing road and railroad transportation for soybean in Brazil.
- Conducted a sensitivity analysis to identify key factors for sustainability improvement.
Main Results:
- The railroad transportation mode for soybeans exhibited superior sustainability performance (Sustainability Synthetic Indicator [SSI] of 3.6 ± 0.4) compared to road transport (SSI of 4.0 ± 0.3).
- Sensitivity analysis indicated that reducing emergy in the railroad system is crucial for improvement.
- Road transport requires focus on mitigating global warming and acidification potentials.
Conclusions:
- SUAPRO offers a robust, scientifically-grounded approach to overcome limitations in existing sustainability assessment methods.
- The framework provides a structured process for selecting indicators and quantifying sustainability performance.
- Acknowledges inherent subjectivity in multicriteria methods, emphasizing transparent criteria for weight selection.
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