AN INTRODUCTORY APPROACH TO CONCRETIZE SOCIAL SUSTAINABILITY FOR SUSTAINABLE MANUFACTURING

• Despite the growing awareness of sustainabilityissues and importance of considering sustainabilityaspects in the product innovation process, themethodological support for doing so is still immaturecompared to the methodological support forconsidering other aspects in the decision-making,such as product performance and manufacturability.The immaturity is particularly pronounced regardingthe social dimension of sustainability. In this paperwe use a novel process for identifying sustainabilitycriteria and estimating a sustainability complianceindex, with the purpose of supporting inclusion ofsocial sustainability aspects in the decision-makingin product development. By including socialsustainability aspects into a compliance metric, thefoundations for strategic and operative decisions canbe integrated. The process has been developed andtested collaboratively with industry representativesin a selected case company. Preliminary results showthat social sustainability criteria can be integrated ina meaningful way into a more complete metric, andthat the learning resulting from gathering knowledgeand experience is a first deployable benefit of theprocess. Challenges and possible ways forward forfurther implementing social sustainability aspects inproduct development are also identified anddiscussed. The next step will be to further test theapplicability of the results, by involving morerepresentatives in the case company and fromcompanies in its value chain.

Ämnesord

TEKNIK OCH TEKNOLOGIER  -- Maskinteknik -- Produktionsteknik, arbetsvetenskap och ergonomi (hsv//swe)

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY  -- Mechanical Engineering -- Production Engineering, Human Work Science and Ergonomics (hsv//eng)

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Geovetenskap och relaterad miljövetenskap (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Earth and Related Environmental Sciences (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

product development

implementation

sustainability compliance

social sustainability

Sustainability criteria

Publikations- och innehållstyp

kon (ämneskategori)

ref (ämneskategori)