Assessment of Malaysia manufacturing water use by using score rating system of aggregated indicators

Abstract

Increase in water demand is unavoidable due to the population growth, industrialization, urbanization and change of lifestyle. Aspires to become an industrialized nation, Malaysia has set profound transformation putting the manufacturing sector to spearhead the change and become one of the biggest contributors to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Growth of manufacturing sector in Malaysia creates increase of water demand that needs attention for performance evaluation towards sustainability. Many assessment methods have been proposed globally in response to these challenges. Evaluation and optimization of manufacturing water use had been done in economic, environmental, social and technical aspects respectively. Nonetheless, approaches to assess manufacturing water use in an integrated aspect has yet to be conducted. Thus, this research aims to develop a novel composite index to evaluate the performance of manufacturing water demand in a holistic manner. The composite index is called Malaysia Manufacturing Industry Water Benchmarking System (MIWABS) that was developed based on relevant sets of indicators under relevant aspects in sustainability principles and was mapped out with Sustainability Development Goals (SDGs). Selection and establishment of indicators were carried out based on specified filtration criteria through water stakeholder workshop. On the other hand, weightage of aspects was done based on Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) method based on water experts’ feedback. As a result, a total of nine indicators under four aspects; economic, environmental, social and technical were created. The indicators that were established under MIWABS framework are E1 (percentage of water in production), E2 (cost to treat wastewater), En1 (percentage of recycle water), En2 (wastewater per product), En3 (water per product), S1 (employee water use), S2 (water conservation effort), T1 (percentage of utility water) and T2 (percentage of process water). Based on the AHP feedback through the collective decision made by water experts in Malaysia, it was found that economic indicators had the weight value of 29.6%, while environmental indicators had the weight value of 38.6%. On the other hand, social indicators had the weight value of 16.2% and technical indicators had the weight value of 15.6%. Rubber glove and semiconductor industries were chosen as the case study to validate and demonstrate the MIWABS framework. Selection of these industry subsectors were made based on statistical data from Department of Statistics Malaysia (DOSM) which was indicated as water-intensive industry. From the MIWABS scores, the profiling of these two industries has been presented. The outcomes of MIWABS show potential strategic improvements for Malaysia manufacturing water use. Due to the increase in water demand, encouragement for water recycling shall be introduced. Additionally, the findings also showed that, manufacturing shall opted for alternative water resources such as groundwater and river to minimize water intake competition between other sectors. Improvement of manufacturing water use is important to support this sector so that it can be boosted as an important industry such as rubber glove which had proven to be in stable and vital demand for the world even during economy downfall due to the global pandemic COVID-19. Efficiency of manufacturing sector aligning with National Policy Industry 4.0 shall be taken into account since water is an integral component for the betterment of Malaysia as one of the industrialized countries.