MCDM Approaches to Sustainability Assessment for Smart Manufacturing

Xu Ruilin

Abstract

With the rapid economic development, there has been a growing phenomenon of environmental pollution and resource wastage. Sustainability has become increasingly important in all aspects of the global economy, including the manufacturing industry. A number of frameworks and measurement schemes have been introduced for sustainability assessments. One particularly prevalent method is the sustainability three pillar framework. However, most existing frameworks generalize sustainability assessment without specifically targeting the manufacturing industry. Also, there lacks a holistic and well-accepted framework for assessing manufacturing sustainability, fully utilizing the advanced networked information emerged through Industrial 4.0. Therefore, with the purpose of developing a well-founded and practical assessment model for manufacturing sustainability, the thesis aims to extends the current three pillar framework to five clusters, as well as to construct multiple criteria decision making (MCDM) models that review the complexity and relationships of elements within the framework. Both Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Analytic Network Process (ANP) are selected as appropriate modeling strategies. This thesis proposes two modelling approaches which both establish the structural relationships within clusters using AHP modelling, yet differentiate in reassembling the AHP sub-models using AHP or ANP methods. With that, the models for sustainable manufacturing assessment are constructed. Two company cases are evaluated under the proposed models for model comparisons. A conclusion is reached that ANP based modelling, though being less straightforward or intuitive as compared to the AHP based modelling, performs better in accounting for the dependency and interactions among clusters.