A Graphical User Interface (GUI) for assessing the sustainability level of manufacturing products: an automotive component case study

Abstract

The capability to manufacture sustainable products has become an important requirement for various manufacturing companies. Subsequently, the ability to assess the sustainability of a manufactured product within any organization would be an important step. Towards this end, different mathematical product assessment methodologies were proposed by researchers but they are deficient in terms of the complexity of the mathematical approaches. Consequently, a GUI was developed to alleviate these difficulties. An automotive component was selected as a case study for demonstrating the use of the GUI. Firstly, seven sub elements were selected, of which, two sub elements were categorized in the environment sustainability element, four were contained in the economic sustainability element and one was grouped in the social sustainability element. Then, Fuzzy Logic (FL) procedure was used for assessing the data and obtaining the sub elements’ scores. Finally, the total sustainability index was calculated. The developed GUIs are useful tools in facilitating the process of assessing sustainability.