Sustainability Performance Measurement Framework for the Product Life Cycle

An Application for the Wind Turbine Industry
1. Auflage 2021
ISBN: 978-3-9818126-7-1
Verlag: Zadek Management & Strategy

Buch, Englisch, Band 6, 333 Seiten, Format (B × H): 148 mm x 210 mm, Gewicht: 470 g

Reihe: Zadek-Publikationen zur Logistik

In the past, it was common for companies to focus solely on economic success. Over the past decade this focus has changed. Due to diverse challenges such as globalization, climate change, scarcity of resources and aging of the population, the development of society cannot longer only give attention to quantitative economic growth. More and more companies are forced by legal regulations, reactions of stakeholders and customer requirements to act even more responsibly. Therefore, companies should reassess their business processes and redesign them in such a way that additional to the economic aspect, dimensions of sustainability regarding ecology and social responsibility are also taken into consideration. Some companies understand sustainability as a commitment for a future-oriented approach.
In his thesis Mr. Janmontree examines three main questions: What is the state of the art to measure sustainability? How can the standpoints of decision-makers be methodically integrated into measuring the performance of sustainability? And how can all three dimensions of sustainability be integrated into measuring the performance of sustainability? While aspects of profitability have been measured, monitored and developed in companies by using key figures for decades, the dimensions of ecology and social responsibility often are neglected or are only monitored qualitatively. This thesis aims at developing a tool for measuring corporate sustainability and at determining a comprehensive sustainability performance that based on uniform criteria also enables a comparison with other companies.
In his work, the author develops a sustainability scorecard to record and visualize quantitative and qualitative key figures. The development of a standardized scorecard gives also the possibility to implement another challenge: Today, not only the performance of an individual company is relevant, but also its performance within the supply chain. Due to the fragmentation of value chains, several companies are involved into the life cycles of products. In this respect, it is not sufficient if only one company is acting in a sustainable way in the supply network, but the consideration must be extended over the entire network. The scorecard developed by the author enables the assessment and mapping of the individual companies involved in the product’s life cycle. Aspects of disposal of the product as a phase of the life cycle are also included.
Based on a case study of the product life cycle of a wind turbine, Mr. Janmontree developed the evaluation method and the scorecard. The author verifies the scorecard and the procedure by means of two companies from the said industry and validates the procedure with an extensive scenario analysis.

Zielgruppe

Führungskräfte oder Manager sowie Studierende des Wirtschaftsingenieurwesens oder der Betriebswirtschaftslehre, die sich mit der Messbarkeit von Nachhaltigkeit in der Lieferkette anhand des Produktlebenszyklusses befassen.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Jettarat, Janmontree

Zadek, Hartmut

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1 Introduction
1.1 Motivation and problem context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2 Research Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.3 Research Methodology and boundary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2 Sustainability performance measurement in a product life cycle 7
2.1 Sustainable development context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2.1.1 Weak and Strong Sustainability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2.1.2 Economic dimension . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
2.1.3 Social dimension . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
2.1.4 Environmental dimension . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
2.2 Sustainability conceptual framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
2.3 Scope and focus of sustainability performance measurement . . . . . 26
2.3.1 Product life cycle and product life cycle management . . . . . . 26
2.3.2 Corporate sustainability vs corporate social responsibility . . . 28
2.4 Introduction to sustainability performance measurement . . . . . . . . 31
2.5 Sustainability performance measurement terminology . . . . . . . . . 33
2.6 Sustainability performance measurement system: systematic literature
review . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
2.6.1 Result of the systematic literature review . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
2.6.2 Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
2.6.3 Life cycle approaches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
2.6.4 Multiple criteria decision making . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
2.6.5 Statistical methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
2.6.6 Discussion on the result of SLR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
2.6.7 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
3 Sustainability performance measurement conceptual framework 53
3.1 Propose framework of sustainability performance measurement . . . . 53
3.2 Defining goals and scope of the measurement . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
3.2.1 The wind turbine industry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
3.2.2 An overview of the wind turbine’s product life cycle . . . . . . . 57
3.2.3 Sustainable development in the wind turbine industry . . . . . 61
3.2.4 Goals and scope definition in the context of the wind turbine
industry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
3.3 Development of the endpoint impact criteria . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
3.3.1 Initial endpoint impact criteria development . . . . . . . . . . . 67
3.3.2 Delphi methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
3.3.3 Theory of Fuzzy Analytical Hierarchy Process (FAHP) . . . . . 75
3.3.4 Pair-wise comparison result: consistency test . . . . . . . . . . 84
3.3.5 Fuzzy pairwise comparison matrix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
3.3.6 Calculation of weight vectors: the extent analysis method . . . 87
3.3.7 Calculation of weight vectors: extent analysis modified approach 89
3.3.8 Summary result of FAHP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
3.4 Development of the midpoint impact criteria . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
3.5 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
4 Design of a scorecard system: a sustainability scorecard 105
4.1 Structure of the sustainability scorecard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
4.1.1 Concept of the sustainability scorecard . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
4.2 Defining measurement indicators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
4.2.1 Midpoint impact criteria: Revenue and profit . . . . . . . . . . . 115
4.2.2 Midpoint impact criteria: Capital investment . . . . . . . . . . . 117
4.2.3 Midpoint impact criteria: Production process development . . . 118
4.2.4 Midpoint impact criteria: Operating and maintenance cost . . . 119
4.2.5 Midpoint impact criteria: Fair salary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
4.2.6 Midpoint impact criteria: Freedom of association and collective
bargaining . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
4.2.7 Midpoint impact criteria: Discrimination and equal opportunity . 123
4.2.8 Midpoint impact criteria: Health and safety of workers . . . . . 125
4.2.9 Midpoint impact criteria: Child labor and forced labor . . . . . . 127
4.2.10 Midpoint impact criteria: Working hour . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
4.2.11 Midpoint impact criteria: Training and education of employee . 130
4.2.12 Midpoint impact criteria: Social benefits and social security . . 131
4.2.13 Midpoint impact criteria: Local employment . . . . . . . . . . . 133
4.2.14 Midpoint impact criteria: Local community acceptability . . . . 134
4.2.15 Midpoint impact criteria: Contribution to economic development 135
4.2.16 Midpoint impact criteria: Public commitment to sustainability issue136
4.2.17 Midpoint impact criteria: Corruption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
4.2.18 Midpoint impact criteria: Consumer health and safety . . . . . 138
4.2.19 Midpoint impact criteria: Pollution production . . . . . . . . . . 138
4.2.20 Midpoint impact criteria: Environmental management system . 140
4.2.21 Midpoint impact criteria: Eco-design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
4.2.22 Midpoint impact criteria: Resource consumption . . . . . . . . 144
4.2.23 Midpoint impact criteria: Reverse logistics . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
4.2.24 Summary and conclusion of the measurement indicator
development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
4.3 Sustainability impact score calculation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
4.4 Integrative Sustainability Triangle (IST) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
4.5 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
5 Sustainability performance measurement in the product life cycle of wind
turbines 155
5.1 Inventory data collection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
5.2 Sustainability performance result interpretation . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184
5.2.1 Overall sustainability performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184
5.2.2 Endpoint and midpoint impact criteria performance . . . . . . . 186
5.2.3 Result analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
5.3 Sustainability scorecard validation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
5.3.1 Validation of the sustainability scorecard . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
5.4 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
6 Conclusion and research perspectives 203
6.1 Research conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204
6.2 Research discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206
6.3 Research limitations and opportunities for future research . . . . . . . 208