Title: Sustainable development index on macro-level in industrial estates and specialised sectors

Authors: Ibrahim H. Garbie

Addresses: Department of Mechanical Engineering at Helwan, Helwan University, Helwan, Cairo, Egypt; Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, Sultan Qaboos University, Muscat, Oman

Abstract: Nowadays, the index of sustainable development or sustainability is estimated/measured based on micro-level (e.g., manufacturing enterprise), but identifying a sustainable development index for a group of different enterprises in one industrial estate or similar group of specific industries in different estates still need more attention not only from academicians and industrialists but also from government and politicians. The main challenge is how to estimate the sustainable development index among similar manufacturing enterprises in different places and/or a group of different industries in one industrial estate. This new index is so called 'macro-level' of sustainability. The novelty of this paper is using normalised, evaluated and weighted sustainability indexes for each assessed value to get and identify full picture of each sustainability items (indicators, issues, pillars, micro-level and macro-level). A hypothetical numerical example is used to illustrate the proposed framework. The results show that the theoretical framework can be applicable in real life case studies.

Keywords: manufacturing sustainability; sustainable development index; manufacturing clusters.

DOI: 10.1504/IJISE.2016.079825

International Journal of Industrial and Systems Engineering, 2016 Vol.24 No.3, pp.384 - 421

Received: 08 Oct 2014
Accepted: 11 Jan 2015

Published online: 17 Oct 2016 *

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