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Development of checklist for evaluating

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ARTICLE in INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PROCESS MANAGEMENT AND BENCHMARKING · JANUARY 2013

DOI: 10.1504/IJPMB.2013.057726

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Int. J. Process Management and Benchmarking, Vol. 3, No. 2, 2013 213

Development of checklist for evaluating sustainability

characteristics of manufacturing processes

K.E.K. Vimal and S. Vinodh*

Department of Production Engineering,
National Institute of Technology,
Tiruchirappalli – 620 015, India
E-mail: vimalkek.engr@gmail.com
E-mail: vinodh_sekar82@yahoo.com
*Corresponding author

Abstract: In recent times manufacturing organisations have been witnessing

stringent regulations from government towards environmental policies. In order
to cope with the government rules and regulations, many organisations
identified sustainable manufacturing as the principal solution. There exists a
need to check the effectiveness of sustainability principles implementation.
The effectiveness can be measured either using quantitative or qualitative
approaches. In general sustainable manufacturing has been viewed in three
perspectives namely: process, product and material. Among three orientations,
process orientation gains attention as it forms the major contributor for the
performance of sustainable concepts in the organisation. In order to assess the
process orientation of manufacturing organisations, in this study we attempt to
develop a checklist to measure the process orientation specifically. The
checklist was developed based on triple bottom line (TBL) concept proposed
by Elkington (1997). The checklist consists of 40 questions which covers all
three Es of TBL namely: ecology, equity and economy. In order to check the
practical usability of the developed checklist, the process sustainability
characteristics were measured in five organisations across various sectors.
Keywords: sustainable development; sustainability; process sustainability
characteristics; checklist.
Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Vimal, K.E.K. and
Vinodh, S. (2013) ‘Development of checklist for evaluating sustainability
characteristics of manufacturing processes’, Int. J. Process Management and
Benchmarking, Vol. 3, No. 2, pp.213–232.
Biographical notes: K.E.K. Vimal is a research scholar in Production
Engineering Department of National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirappalli,
India. He received his Master’s in Industrial Engineering from Production
Engineering Department, National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirappalli,
Tamil Nadu. His areas of research interests include Lean and sustainable
manufacturing.
S. Vinodh is an Assistant Professor in Production Engineering Department of
National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirappalli, India. He completed his PhD
from PSG College of Technology, Coimbatore, India. He was a gold medallist
in his undergraduate and post graduate studies. He has been awarded Highly
Commended Paper award and Outstanding Paper Award by Emerald
publishers, UK for the year 2009 and 2011. He has published over 100 papers
in international journals and in proceedings of the leading national and
international conferences. His research interests include agile, lean and
sustainable systems and multi-criteria decision making.

Copyright © 2013 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

214 K.E.K. Vimal and S. Vinodh

1 Introduction

The rising global environmental problems due to over consumption of natural resources
and pollution resulting from the life of technical products have led to increasing political
pressure and stronger regulations being applied to both manufacturers and users of such
products (Duda and El-Ashry, 2009; Vinodh, 2011). Due to these stringent conditions
prevailing in the markets, the manufacturers have to adopt new systems to maintain good
position in the market. In order to adopt to the new government regulations many
organisations identified sustainable manufacturing as the potential solution. It has
become so important because of the economic crisis and climatic changes (Hufbauer et
al., 2009; Amundsen et al., 2010; Schoenherr, 2012), pressure from all levels of stake
holders and scarcity of materials (de Ron, 1998). Sustainable development in
manufacturing firm can be achieved by targeting improvements in three orientations such
as material, product design and manufacturing process (Vinodh 2011). All these three
alternatives often go hand in hand at times in designing and developing a sustainable
product. Sustainable manufacturing is the subset of the broad topic of sustainable
development. Sustainable manufacturing (manufacturing for sustainability) ensured that
all levels of employees are equipped to participate in and contribute to sustainable
operations (Smith, 2013). There is now a huge opportunity and support from the
management to practice new principles in manufacturing to lead sustainable
manufacturing. The implementations of sustainable manufacturing will improve the
greener image of the organisation, their workforce and wider communities (Chen, 2011).
More specifically, sustainable manufacturing requires balancing and integrating
economic and environmental societal objectives, supportive policies and practices
(Roseland, 2000; Finkbeiner et al., 2010). The link between manufacturing and its
operations to the natural environment needs to be effectively made (Ljungberg, 2007).
The main factors contributing to environmental impacts include material and energy
consumption during machining operations (Young et al., 2000).
Of the three orientations namely product, process and material, process perspective
gains more importance because it directly contributes to emissions, energy and resource
consumption. The effectiveness of environmentally benign practices can be measured by
assessing the process sustainability characteristics of the organisation. Sustainability is
the performance measure of prevailing sustainable characteristics in an organisation. TBL
concept proposed by Elkington (1997) is the basic concept used to measure sustainability
in three orientations namely environment, economy and society. Many assessment
techniques namely multi grade fuzzy (MGF), fuzzy logic and inference mechanism were
available to measure the effectiveness of advanced manufacturing systems (Lin et al.,
2006; Vinodh and Chintha, 2011; Vinodh, 2011; Vimal and Vinodh, 2012). But the
problem with these techniques are: highly computation-oriented, consumes more time,
difficult to understand and requires assistance from external expert. To overcome these
drawbacks, Vinodh (2011) used Likert scale-based assessment to validate the practical
compatibility of their model. The main advantage of Likert’s scale questions are: it is
easy to understand them; it is easy to draw conclusions, reports, results and graphs from
the responses. But, the questions need to be properly framed and it should not be biased
to get the exact assessment. One problem with the Likert’s scale is, the responder always
try to take the neutral options like 3 in 1 to 5 scale. To avoid this problem, Brown (2001)
suggested to go for even number of options to force respondents to express definite
opinion.
 Development of checklist for evaluating sustainability characteristics 215

In this study, we adopted a checklist-based assessment model using Likert’s scale to

effectively assess the process characteristics of an organisation from TBL viewpoint. The
checklist is comprehensive and covers all three aspects of sustainability. Finally, the
effectiveness and comprehensiveness of the developed checklist were checked by
conducting assessment in five organisations comprising of range of manufacturing
sectors namely: electronics and automobile. The practical applicability of the model is
checked by conducting hypothesis testing based on the responses from the industrial
experts.

2 Literature review

The literature has been reviewed from the perspectives of sustainable development,
sustainability, and orientations of sustainable manufacturing.
The modern manufacturing organisations are realising the need for enabling
greener image for survival in the competitive environment. The World Commission
on Environment and Development (WCED) defines sustainable development as the
development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of
future generations to meet their own needs (Brundtland, 1987; Hult, 2011; Sisaye, 2011;
Elliott, 2012). The commission proposed this definition by considering the economic,
environmental, social and political perspectives rather than solely on science. These
recommendations focused on integrating global partnerships to meet sustainable
development (Elliott, 2012). Dincer and Rosen (2012) Provided the unified energy-based
structure that provides useful insights and directions to those involved in sustainable
development by analysing and addressing energy aspects. Sustainable development is no
longer considering solely environmental concern, but also incorporates economic and
social dimensions (Dempsey et al., 2011).
The term sustainable manufacturing was often referred to as eco-efficiency,
remanufacturing, green technology, cleaner production etc. Sustainable manufacturing
focuses mainly three orientations namely product, process and material. In product
orientation, Dangelico and Pujari (2010) proposed a conceptual framework that presents
three key environmental dimensions of green product innovation such as energy
minimisation, materials reduction, and pollution prevention as identified in the life cycle
phases of products. Jeya Girubha and Vinodh (2012) used fuzzy VIKOR technique for
the selection of alternate material for instrument panel used in electric car by considering
environmental impacts assessment. Heijungs et al. (2010) focused on the development of
a framework for sustainable and environmental assessment of products which also covers
the three pillars of sustainability. Hallstedt et al. (2010) developed the assessment
approach for product development in theory and its applicability was directly tested in
action research in two small and medium-sized companies and two large companies.
Mebratu (1998) discussed the definition of sustainable development, sustainability
and also reviewed the vagueness associated with definition, and pointed out the
misconception regarding some of the definitions. Sustainability is defined as the
capability of an organisation to maintain environmental safety and minimise resource
utilisation (Vinodh, 2011; Hymel et al., 2012). Also it refers to the performance measure
of sustainable manufacturing. TBL concept proposed by Elkington (1997) has been used
by many researchers for various researches (Wiedmann and Lenzen, 2009; Hubbard,
2009; Fauzi et al., 2010; Nikolaou et al., 2011; Bergenwall et al., 2012; Lee et al., 2012).
216 K.E.K. Vimal and S. Vinodh

TBL is the basic concept used to measure sustainability in three orientations namely
environment, economy and society. Labuschagne et al. (2005) reviewed the sustainability
methods such as global reporting initiative by considering criteria under three
orientations namely environment, economy and society. Many studies have been
conducted to measure the sustainability level of the organisation (Pope et al., 2004;
Krajnc and Glavič, 2005; Abouelnaga et al., 2010; Vinodh, 2011). The sustainability can
be classified as product sustainability, process sustainability, social sustainability and
corporate sustainability. Pope et al. (2004) compared two types of approaches used for
assessment of sustainability such as triple bottom line (TBL) approach that includes
environmental impact assessment (EIA) driven integrated assessment, objectives-led
integrated assessment and assessment for sustainability and principle-based approaches
and concluded that appropriate assessment can be done by principle-based approaches.
In 1997, Choi et al. (1997) developed an assessment methodology on the basis of the
‘material balance’ of a process and the relationship amongst different processes. As a
result, the amount of solid waste generated, energy consumed, waste-water incurred as
well as the level of noise are obtained. Afgan et al. (1999) conducted sustainability
assessment on desalination plants using TBL concept. Ravetz (2000) presented an
integrated assessment approach for sustainability appraisal in city regions. Figge et al.
(2002) developed sustainability balanced scorecard for assessing the corporate social
responsibility. The author claimed that the shortcomings of conventional approaches can
be overcome by integrating three pillars of sustainability with corporate aspects. Dyllick
and Hockerts (2002) developed six criteria aiming for corporate sustainability to satisfy:
eco-efficiency, socio-efficiency, eco-effectiveness, socio-effectiveness, sufficiency and
ecological equity as a contribution to the ongoing conceptual development of corporate
sustainability. The authors discussed how the concept of sustainable development has
evolved over the past three decades and particularly how it can be applied to the business
level. They concluded that with the concept of sustainability so unclear, considerable
more attention needs to be given to building a systematic theory of corporate
sustainability and more quantitative hypothesis testing would also be helpful for areas
such as the actual magnitude of the rebound effect and its impact on eco-effectiveness.
Lozano (2008) presented an innovative attempt to represent sustainability in three
dimensions namely Venn diagram, three concentric circles and planning hexagon which
shows the complex and dynamic equilibrium among economic, environmental and social
aspects, and the short-, long- and longer-term perspectives. Vinodh et al. (2011)
developed a conceptual model to formulate the new theory for sustainability evaluation,
to overcome drawbacks associated with conventional crisp approaches and to apply fuzzy
method for sustainability evaluation. The author reported a research carried out for
assessing the sustainability of an organisation using multi-grade fuzzy approach.

2.1 Research gap

Sustainable development in manufacturing process is the need of the hour in order to
reduce the negative environmental impact. Many researchers contributed models for
assessing the sustainability level of an organisation using techniques like fuzzy logic,
MGF etc. but due to high mathematical computations, these approaches found limited
success. In order to eliminate these drawbacks, questionnaire-based assessment model
can be used which has less mathematical computations and can be easily understood by
the experts in the organisation. In this context, this study was conducted for sustainability
 Development of checklist for evaluating sustainability characteristics 217

characteristics evaluation. Also, general sustainability model is widely available whereas

a specific model to assess the process sustainability characteristics is missing. This forms
the scope of this study.

3 Methodology

The methodology followed during the study is shown in Figure 1. Based on the literature
review, a questionnaire-based checklist was developed. In total, 40 questions were
formulated, which focuses on environmental, economic and social perspectives of
sustainability. This is followed by the identification of case organisations. Five
organisations were identified across electronic and, automobile sectors. In order to
validate the developed checklist, process sustainability assessment was conducted in
identified organisations. For assessing the process sustainability characteristics of the
case organisations, an expert team was formed which comprises of heads of various
departments namely design, production, customer service, quality control and new
product development, senior engineers, process planner, etc. Then, the responses were
obtained from the experts with the scale shown in Table 1. The seven-point scale has
been widely found in literature (Miller, 1956). With an example, the scoring used for
“whether required actions are taken towards minimisation of hazardous material
substance” is explained in Table 1. After collecting the responses from the expert team,
responses were summed to get the total score. Then sustainability level has been
computed with reference to Bhasin (2011) as shown Table 2. The total score is mapped
against the scores shown in Table 2 and sustainability level is obtained. Finally
hypothesis testing is done to check the effectiveness of developed questionnaire in
assessing the process sustainability characteristics.

Figure 1 Methodology (see online version for colours)

218 K.E.K. Vimal and S. Vinodh

Table 1 Seven point scale used for assessment

Rating Judgment
0 No idea to minimise
< 1.5 management is about take initiative
1.5–3 Initiatives have been taken to minimise
3–4.5 Initial steps have been taken
4.5–6 Action plan has been prepared to minimise usage
6–7.5 Initially few process hazardous substance usage has been minimised
7.5–9 Minimisation plan has been implemented throughout the organisation
9–10 Hazardous material usage is minimised

Table 2 Process sustainability level

% of scores Process sustainability level

0%–15% Not sustainable
15%–30% Slowly sustainable
30%–50% Fairly sustainable
50%–65% Sustainable
65%–85% Very sustainable
85%–100% Extremely sustainable

4 Case study

4.1 Case organisation

The case organisations were identified in electronics and automobile sectors. The
organisations are selected in such a way that they have already implemented principles of
advanced manufacturing systems and management showed commitment towards
implementation and assessment of manufacturing systems. Based on the above criteria,
five organisations were selected. The organisations are located in and around Tamil
Nadu. The profile of the candidate organisations are given as below.
• number of employees working = 50–400
• number of customers = 3–10
• number of suppliers = 1–20
• distribution pattern is transportation by trucks
• current turnover = 20–800 million INR (Indian Rupee) (≈ .33–13.05 million USD).
All these five companies have implemented and effectively following lean manufacturing
principles. The products manufactured in automobile sector include power steering gear
assembly, power steering pump assembly and seat belts whereas in electronic sector are
rotary switches, load break switches, relays and contactors, cable ducts and modular
switches, and primary manufacturing process is plastic injection moulding.
 Development of checklist for evaluating sustainability characteristics 219

4.2 Need for the study and problem statement

Many organisations attempt to improve their organisational process sustainability
characteristics to cope up with the new government regulations. This situation
necessitates the assessment of process sustainable characteristics prevailing in the
organisation. The industrial experts preferred the usage of questionnaire-based checklist
as compared to the mathematical model-based assessment to enable user friendliness.
From the literature review, it was found that there exists no model to assess the process
sustainability characteristics prevailing in the organisation. So there exists a need to
develop a set of questionnaire, which measures the sustainability characteristics of three
orientations namely environment, economy and society.

4.3 Cross functional team

For the evaluation of various sustainability aspects prevailing in the organisation, we
developed a cross functional team which comprises of research members and group of
experts from the candidate organisations. The experts from the organisations were the
heads of departments like product development, design, manufacturing and process
planning, and marketing.

4.4 Process sustainability checklist

The checklist was developed through literature review. The questions were identified in
three categories namely environment, economy and society. Among three orientations,
environmental perspective was given higher priority. The checklist consists of
40 questions, which comprises of questions from environmental, social and economic
perspectives as shown in Table 3. The checklist mainly focuses on various dimensions of
sustainability like: flexibility and response to changes, reciprocal arrangements, conflict
resolution, defect ratio, reverse logistics, management for hazardous substances,
recyclability, re-manufacturing, re-usability, re-design, environmental management,
pollution prevention and control aspects, carbon footprint, waste management, energy
conservation, environmental friendliness, EoL disposal, resource usage, green image,
enforcement for socio-environmental performance, implication of health hazards and its
practices, employee career development program and macro social performance.

4.5 Assessment in candidate organisations

The case organisations were assessed with the developed questionnaire. The questions are
shown in Table 3. For assessing the process sustainability characteristics, the scale shown
in Table 1 is used. It is a seven-point scale. The meetings were arranged with all cross
functional team members. The responses were obtained for all the questions from the
cross functional team based on the subjective judgment. The assessment sheet was
supplied to the cross functional team. Based on the discussion sessions, the responses
were obtained from the experts and an excerpt is shown in Table 4. In Table 4, the
organisations were designated as O1, O2, O3, O4 and O5. Then after obtaining the score,
scores are cumulated to get the total score. Then total score is mapped to get the process
sustainability level of the organisations.
 220

Table 3

Attribute 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28
Whether frequent survey have been conducted to know * 2
market position?
Whether Standard operating procedures for all possible *
operations are available?
Whether dedicated teams are available for monitoring and *
observation of equipment performance?
Whether all operations are equipped with in-line monitoring *
mechanism?
K.E.K. Vimal and S. Vinodh

Whether management strategy enables tie up with other *

organisation to use resources, rendering assistance etc.?
Whether initiatives have been taken to continuously assess *
lead time?
Whether effective maintenance strategies have been used to *
prevent failure?
Whether the inspection plans are being updated frequently? *
Whether brainstorming activity is periodically conducted to *
improve testing efficiency?
Whether scientific methods have been used to solve *
stochastic routing problem?
Notes: 1 – Agarwal et al. (2006), 2 – Gross et al. (2001), 3 – Aydın Keskin et al. (2010), 4 – Mehra et al. (2001), 5 – Gulati (1998), 6 – Lokesh and Jain (2010),
7 – Ha and Krishnan (2008), 8 – Anand and Khanna (2000), 9 – Fleischmann (2003), 10 – Hsu et al. (2011), 11 – Noci (1997), 12 – Hussain (2011),
13 – Hall (2000), 14 – Emek and Kara (2007), 15 – Silva et al. (2007), 16 – Jeya Girubha and Vinodh (2012), 17 – Vinodh and Jayakrishna (2012),
Checklist-based questionnaire for process sustainability assessment

18 – Boustead and Hancock (1979), 19 – Güneri et al. (2011), 20 – Zhang (2005), 21 – Foxon and Pearson (2008), 22 – Laurent et al. (2010), 23 – Becker (2010),
24 – Cui et al. (2008), 25 – Kuo et al. (2010), 26 – Dubey and Veeramani (2011), 27 – European Commission and Observatory of European SMEs (2002),
28 – Vinodh and Vimal (2012).
 Table 3

Attribute 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28
Whether proper instructions are being communicated for
safety handling, use and transportation of materials?
Whether proper techniques are applied for hazardous waste *
disposal?
Are the recycled materials being properly assessed? *
Does the available facilities are sufficient to cope up with *
demand?
Do the products manufactured be reconditioned or *
reassembled?
Whether teams are dedicated to formulate in-house *
technologies and principles?
Whether scientific tools/techniques have been used to *
optimise environmental resource consumption?
Are the government regulations being strictly followed with *
respect to release of water effluents and pollutants?
Whether released liquid effluents are being properly treated? * *
Whether green house gas, eutrophication, acidification and *
energy consumption indicators are been measured?
Notes: 1 – Agarwal et al. (2006), 2 – Gross et al. (2001), 3 – Aydın Keskin et al. (2010), 4 – Mehra et al. (2001), 5 – Gulati (1998), 6 – Lokesh and Jain (2010),
7 – Ha and Krishnan (2008), 8 – Anand and Khanna (2000), 9 – Fleischmann (2003), 10 – Hsu et al. (2011), 11 – Noci (1997), 12 – Hussain (2011),
13 – Hall (2000), 14 – Emek and Kara (2007), 15 – Silva et al. (2007), 16 – Jeya Girubha and Vinodh (2012), 17 – Vinodh and Jayakrishna (2012),
18 – Boustead and Hancock (1979), 19 – Güneri et al. (2011), 20 – Zhang (2005), 21 – Foxon and Pearson (2008), 22 – Laurent et al. (2010), 23 – Becker (2010),
24 – Cui et al. (2008), 25 – Kuo et al. (2010), 26 – Dubey and Veeramani (2011), 27 – European Commission and Observatory of European SMEs (2002),
28 – Vinodh and Vimal (2012).
Development of checklist for evaluating sustainability characteristics

Checklist-based questionnaire for process sustainability assessment (continued)

221
 222

Table 3

Attribute 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28
Whether the organisation is following proper technique to *
segregate degradable and non-degradable wastes?
Whether appropriate methodology is being used for waste *
processing?
Whether the organisation conducts self energy audit to *
improve efficiency?
Whether the scope for renewable energy production and *
usage is explored?
K.E.K. Vimal and S. Vinodh

Does the energy conservation topics being included in * *

training agenda of organisation?
Whether the materials used are environmentally friendlier? *
Whether the organisation intend to develop in-house cleaner *
technologies?
Does the organisation is interested to adopt DfE principles? *
Whether clean development mechanism practice has been *
effectively followed?
Whether carbon foot-print level has been measured *
Whether the implementation of effective steps to reduce Land *
use have been carried out?
Notes: 1 – Agarwal et al. (2006), 2 – Gross et al. (2001), 3 – Aydın Keskin et al. (2010), 4 – Mehra et al. (2001), 5 – Gulati (1998), 6 – Lokesh and Jain (2010),
7 – Ha and Krishnan (2008), 8 – Anand and Khanna (2000), 9 – Fleischmann (2003), 10 – Hsu et al. (2011), 11 – Noci (1997), 12 – Hussain (2011),
13 – Hall (2000), 14 – Emek and Kara (2007), 15 – Silva et al. (2007), 16 – Jeya Girubha and Vinodh (2012), 17 – Vinodh and Jayakrishna (2012),
18 – Boustead and Hancock (1979), 19 – Güneri et al. (2011), 20 – Zhang (2005), 21 – Foxon and Pearson (2008), 22 – Laurent et al. (2010), 23 – Becker (2010),
24 – Cui et al. (2008), 25 – Kuo et al. (2010), 26 – Dubey and Veeramani (2011), 27 – European Commission and Observatory of European SMEs (2002),
28 – Vinodh and Vimal (2012).
Checklist-based questionnaire for process sustainability assessment (continued)
 Table 3

Attribute 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28
Whether consumption of minerals, fossil fuels and rare earth * *
elements are being quantified?
Does the organisation show interest to ensure equity and *
motivation to retain staff?
Whether socio-economic culture is prevailing in the *
organisation?
Whether the organisation is strictly following the usage of *
personal protection equipment?
Whether the organisation is providing training in advanced *
manufacturing processes and evaluation for continuous
improvement?
Does the organisation follows evaluation scheme for *
continuous improvement?
Does the organisation involves employee in decision making? *
Does the organisation presenting their yearly report on
sustainability?
Whether the organisation is green labelling for all the
manufactured products?
Notes: 1 – Agarwal et al. (2006), 2 – Gross et al. (2001), 3 – Aydın Keskin et al. (2010), 4 – Mehra et al. (2001), 5 – Gulati (1998), 6 – Lokesh and Jain (2010),
7 – Ha and Krishnan (2008), 8 – Anand and Khanna (2000), 9 – Fleischmann (2003), 10 – Hsu et al. (2011), 11 – Noci (1997), 12 – Hussain (2011),
13 – Hall (2000), 14 – Emek and Kara (2007), 15 – Silva et al. (2007), 16 – Jeya Girubha and Vinodh (2012), 17 – Vinodh and Jayakrishna (2012),
18 – Boustead and Hancock (1979), 19 – Güneri et al. (2011), 20 – Zhang (2005), 21 – Foxon and Pearson (2008), 22 – Laurent et al. (2010), 23 – Becker (2010),
24 – Cui et al. (2008), 25 – Kuo et al. (2010), 26 – Dubey and Veeramani (2011), 27 – European Commission and Observatory of European SMEs (2002),
28 – Vinodh and Vimal (2012).
Development of checklist for evaluating sustainability characteristics

Checklist-based questionnaire for process sustainability assessment (continued)

223
224 K.E.K. Vimal and S. Vinodh

Table 4 Excerpt of cross functional team responses

Questions O1 O2 O3 O4 O5
Whether frequent survey have been conducted to know market 6 6.5 7 6.5 7
position?
Whether standard operating procedures for all possible 5 6 5 5.5 6
operations are available?
Whether dedicated teams are available for monitoring and 6.5 7 6.5 6 6.5
observation of equipment performance?
Whether all operations are equipped with in-line monitoring 6 6.5 5.5 6 6.5
mechanism?
Whether management strategy enables tie up with other 3.5 4 4.5 3 4.5
organisation to use resources, rendering assistance, etc.?

5 Results and discussions

The cumulative result for the supplied checklist is shown in Table 5. The score shown in
Table 5 is obtained by summing all the scores obtained from the cross functional team.
The scores were mapped (Figure 2) against the process sustainability level using the
levels shown in Table 2. The chart shown in Figure 2 is used to obtain the process
sustainability level of the organisations. In X-axis, five organisations were marked using
the notations O1, O2, O3, O4 and O5. In Y-axis, percentage of scores has been marked.
The six levels not sustainable, slowly sustainable, fairly sustainable, sustainable, very
sustainable and extremely sustainable were denoted using different colours. Then the
scores shown in Table 5 have been marked in the chart.
From Figure 2, it is evident that all the organisation falls in the range of ‘fairly
sustainable’. Further to improve the process sustainability characteristics of the
organisations, weaker areas have been identified. After discussion with the experts, the
threshold value was fixed to be 4.5. If the score of a question falls below that value, the
criteria represented by that question are identified to be weaker. The identified weaker
criteria for organisation O1 is shown in Table 6. Following are the suggestions for
improving the process sustainability characteristics in the organisation: tie ups are
recommended with the organisation manufacturing similar products. By adjusting the
management policy to render to improve environmental performance, to conduct LCA for
products and processes, to conduct energy audit, to conduct carbon footprint analysis,
etc., also dedicated teams are advised to be formed for improving the resource
consumption efficiency, decrease the usage of hazardous material and process, by
identifying alternative materials and by developing in house cleaner technologies.
Following strategies were suggested to improve the social performance of the
organisation. Workers are guaranteed for their job, frequent conduct of awareness
program on working culture and operational safety, workers were given freedom to
involvement in decision making process. Training sessions are suggested for data
collection within the organisation towards providing sustainability report and product
labelling with external resource person.
 Development of checklist for evaluating sustainability characteristics 225

Table 5 Cumulative scores of organisations

Organisation O1 O2 O3 O4 O5
Total score 196.5 202 200.5 195 201
Percentage 45.69 46.97 46.62 45.34 46.74

Figure 2 Sustainability level of organisations (see online version for colours)

Table 6 Question representing weaker criteria of ‘O1’

S. no. Weaker criteria Score

1 Whether management strategy enables tie up with other organisation to use 3.5
resources, rendering assistance, etc.?
2 Whether scientific methods have been used to solve Stochastic routing 4
problem?
3 Whether released liquid effluents are being properly treated? 4
4 Whether green house gas, eutrophication, acidification and energy consumption 5
indicators are been measured?
5 Whether the organisation conducts self-energy audit to improve efficiency? 3.5
6 Whether the scope for renewable energy production and usage is explored? 2.5
7 Does the energy conservation topics being included in training agenda of 2.5
organisation?
226 K.E.K. Vimal and S. Vinodh

Table 6 Question representing weaker criteria of ‘O1’ (continued)

S. no. Weaker criteria Score

8 Whether the materials used are environmentally friendlier? 3.5
9 Whether the organisation intend to develop in-house cleaner technologies? 3.5
10 Whether carbon foot-print level has been measured 3.5
11 Whether the implementation of effective steps to reduce land use have been 3.5
carried out?
12 Whether consumption of minerals, fossil fuels and rare earth elements are being 4.5
quantified?
13 Does the organisation show interest to ensure equity and motivation to retain 3.5
staff?
14 Whether socio-economic culture is prevailing in the organisation ? 2.5
15 Whether the organisation is conducting employee awareness programs? 4
16 Whether the organisation is strictly following the usage of personal protection 3
equipment?
17 Does the organisation involves employee in decision making? 3
18 Does the organisation pave the way for strong employee sprit and cooperation? 3
19 Does the organisation presenting their yearly report on sustainability? 3.5
20 Whether the organisation is green labelling for all the manufactured products? 0.5

5.1 Questionnaire-based statistical validation

In order to practically validate the effectiveness of developed model, questionnaire has
been developed. The number of responses to be collected for the required confidence
level was calculated using equation (1). Using equation (1), the size was found to be
≈26 (sample size). So five experts were identified from each organisation and the
responses were collected.
M −μ
Z= (1)
σ
n
Z Z score for 90 % confidence level
M average value
μ sample mean
σ standard deviation.
The developed questions for validating the checklist model
1 To what extent do you believe that the process sustainability characteristics
assessment is practically feasible in your organisation with the developed checklist?
2 To what extent do you believe that developed questions are answerable?
 Development of checklist for evaluating sustainability characteristics 227

3 To what extent do you believe that the process sustainability characteristics

assessment represents reality?
4 To what extents do you believe that the developed checklist exactly measures the
process sustainability characteristics?
The formulated hypothesis is shown in Table 7.
Table 7 Hypothesis for hypothetical testing

Hypothesis H0 The developed checklist effectively measures the process sustainability

characteristics of the organisation
H1 The developed checklist does not effectively measuring the process
sustainability characteristics of the organisation

The responses collected are shown in Table 8.

Table 8 Excerpt of the responses collected

Questions E1 E2 E3 E4 E5
To what extent do you believe that the process sustainability 9 10 9 9 10
characteristics assessment is practically feasible in your
organisation with the developed checklist?
To what extent do you believe that developed questions are 10 10 10 10 10
answerable?
To what extent do you believe that the process sustainability 9 9 9 9 9
characteristics assessment represents reality?
To what extents do you believe that the developed checklist 10 10 9 9 9
exactly measures the process sustainability characteristics?

On the whole, this validation study indicates the feasibility of assessing the process
sustainability characteristics using developed checklist with the success rate of 90%.

6 Conclusions

In this study, we attempted to develop a framework to assess process sustainability

characteristics prevailing in the organisations to fulfil the research gap identified based on
the literature review. In order overcome the computational difficulty associated with the
existing methodologies, we developed a questionnaire-based checklist to assess the
sustainability level of the organisation which covers all three aspects of sustainability
namely environment, economic and social. In order to check the feasibility of assessing
process sustainability using the developed checklist, we conducted studies in five
candidate organisation. After conducting the studies, the scores obtained by five
organisations are 45.69%, 46.97%, 46.62%, 45.34% and 46.74%. Then by mapping the
scores against the process sustainability level, it was found that all five organisations are
falling in Fairly sustainable level. This shows that the organisation need to implement
improvement strategies to improve the process sustainability level. In this study, we
presented the improvement strategies suggested to organisation O1. In O1, 20 criteria
were identified as weaker. Finally, using hypothetical testing, the developed
questionnaire has been statistically validated for its practical usability.
228 K.E.K. Vimal and S. Vinodh

6.1 Limitations and future research directions

In this study, the developed model does not include criteria which focus on process
parameters, working environmental conditions and performance of environmental
indicators to avoid difficulty associated with data collection. In future, this can also be
included for comprehensive study on process sustainability characteristics.

Acknowledgements

The authors are thankful to anonymous reviewers and Editor of International Journal of
Process Management and Benchmarking Dr. Angappa Gunasekaran for their constructive
suggestions which improved the quality of the manuscript.

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