Ibrahim H. Garbie

An analytical technique to model and assess sustainable development index in manufacturing enterprises

Sustainable development (SD) will be the driving force to Twenty-first Century as automation was to the Twentieth Century and stream was to Nineteenth Century. There are two levels of sustainability: Macro-Level (country, cities) and Micro-Level (manufacturing enterprises and its town and regional areas). In this paper, Micro-Level of sustainability will be discussed. The major challenge of manufacturing enterprises is modelling and assessing the sustainable development performance. Introducing indexes for sustainable development assessment in manufacturing enterprises is important not only to enable them to quantitatively estimate SD, but also to determine the requirements of components for these enterprises to survive. The main objectives addressed in this paper is how to model the required components and how to introduce a new assessment framework for assessing sustainability from lowest levels, dimensions up to sustainable development level according to Micro-Level. The three pillars of sustainability (economic, social and environmental) are modelled, estimated and incorporated into a concept, the so-called ‘general sustainable development index’. Based on these concepts, the sustainable models will be analysed and presented through covering all aspects/issues of sustainability. The ultimate goal of this paper is considering the needs of manufacturing enterprise to be sustainable as well as to be globalised through introducing the concept of economic-social-environmental sustainable development and basic attitudes related to creating sustainable development value in engineering practices (economic), social (political) and environmental community. An industry-based case study is used to represent sustainability through aspects, performance metrics, indicators and pillars.

DFSME: design for sustainable manufacturing enterprises (an economic viewpoint)

Design for sustainable manufacturing enterprise (DFSME) is considered to be a new ideologue regarding survival of manufacturing enterprise and it can also be considered as one of the most important solutions to deal with the existing global financial crisis. The DFSME is a systemic approach that simultaneously determines the aspects of sustainability and how they can be aggregated taking into consideration the globalisation issues. The problem addressed in this paper is how to present the concepts of sustainability to guide manufacturing enterprises analysts and designers with the most effective aspects for analysing sustainability. These aspects are: international issues; contemporary issues; innovative products; reconfigurable manufacturing systems; manufacturing strategies; business models; flexible organisation management; manufacturing strategies and performance measurements. Based on these aspects, the sustainable model will be analysed and presented through covering all aspects of sustainable manufacturing enterprise and the sustainability assessment will be measured. The ultimate goal of this paper is to consider the needs of manufacturing enterprise throughout most of the world to be sustainable as well as to be globalised enterprises. This analysis shows that the DFSME is a very large task and should be taken into consideration as one aspect of the next industrial revolution.

Analysis and estimation of complexity level in industrial firms

Nowadays, industrial firms require a reduction in their complexity. Complexity in industrial firms presents a new challenge in this decade, especially, during the global recession. Estimation of the level of complexity in industrial firms is still unclear due to the difficulty of analysis of important issues. This research will put a framework to in-depth analysis of these issues and concepts to estimate the expected complexity level in industrial firms. In this paper, a fuzzy logic approach was proposed to estimate the complexity level of the industrial organisations and a computer software package was created to manipulate a huge amount of collected data. Several case studies were conducted to obtain a clear understanding of the causes of complexity in industrial organisations to demonstrate the proposed methodology of analysis and estimation. The results show that the complexity of industrial organisations is still an ill-structured multi-dimensional problem and needs more attention from manufacturers and academics.

Design for complexity: a global perspective through industrial enterprises analyst and designer

Industrial enterprises analysts and/or designers should be aware of the impact of complexity in their organisations, although they are often defined as being complex. Nowadays, the researchers focused their attention on design for manufacturing, design for assembly, design for cost or design for quality, design for X, etc. they did not mention design for complexity as an important issue especially during the existing global financial crisis. Design for complexity is a systemic approach that simultaneously considers optimising design objectives (i.e. minimise complexity level), variables (parameters) and constraints. This paper includes how to present the concepts of complexity to guide industrial enterprises analysts and designers with the most effective issues and perspective strategies for analysing, planning and eliminating complexity to satisfy design of industrial enterprises. Based on these aspects, the complexity levels will be analysed and evaluated through identifying four major issues: design for vision complexity, design for system structure, design for operating complexity and design for evaluating complexity. The ultimate goal of this paper is to provide the industrial enterprises designers with such complexity information. This analysis shows that the design for complexity is a huge task and should be optimised and taken into considerations when designing an industrial enterprise.

A methodology for the reconfiguration process in manufacturing systems

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to propose a “Reconfiguration Methodology” in manufacturing systems that they can become more economically sustainable and can operate efficiency and effectively. This methodology will allow customized flexibility and capacity not only in producing a variety of products (parts) and with changing market demands, but also in changing and reengineering the system itself. Design/methodology/approach – Reconfigurable manufacturing system (RMS) is a philosophy or strategy which was introduced during the last decade to achieve agility in manufacturing systems. Until now, the RMS philosophy was based changing activities such routing, planning, programming of machines, controlling, scheduling, and physical layout or materials handling system. But the RMS concept can be based on the needed reconfiguration level (NRL), operational status of production systems, and new circumstances (NC). The NRL measure is based on the agility level of the manufacturing systems which is based o...

Concepts and measurements of industrial complexity: a state-of-the-art survey

This paper is intended to provide a comprehensive literature review on complexity of manufacturing/industrial systems. The study aims to review the current complexity status and measurements approaches. The review covers articles published on major journals related to the topic presenting state-of-the-art results on the complexity analyses and measurements. The contribution of this study lies in the taxonomy of detailed description and analysis of methodologies used in the literature. This analysis shows that the majority of these articles only explain the complexity concepts as a framework and complexity measurements related to structural and dynamical issues.

DFMER: design for manufacturing enterprise reconfiguration considering globalisation issues

Currently, researchers are concentrating their attention on design for manufacturing, design for assembly, design for cost and design for quality; (or design for X, in general), but they do not mention design for manufacturing enterprise reconfiguration (DFMER). The problem addressed in this paper is how to present the concepts of globalisation to guide manufacturing enterprise analysts and designers with the most effective issues for analysing reconfigurable levels. These issues include international issues, contemporary issues, global manufacturing systems, local performance and flexible management. Based on these aspects, the global reconfigurable level (RL) will be analysed and evaluated by identifying the major reconfiguration elements. The ultimate goal of this paper is to consider the needs of manufacturing enterprises to be globalised. In this research, a conceptual framework for a design for reconfiguration will be presented and the results show that the DFMER should be taken into consideration for the next industrial revolution.

Management for Sustainability

Management for sustainability is the last proposed issue regarding economic sustainability. Several sub-issues are elucidated below to discuss management for sustainability including strategic planning, organizing work, organization structures, leadership style, and management culture. These sub-issues must be considered within the manufacturing enterprises. A definition and analysis of each sub-issue will be discussed and a sustainability framework for assessing the sustainability/sustainable development index will be introduced through an illustrative example.

Performance analysis and measurement of reconfigurable manufacturing systems

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to propose a new performance analysis and measurement regarding reconfigurable manufacturing systems (RMS) taken into consideration new circumstances which include changes in the market demand, changes in a product design, and/or introduction of a new product. As the reconfiguration process is applied to a manufacturing system to improve the systems performance due to new circumstances, the RMS process has potential quantitative and qualitative measures. Design/methodology/approach – The manufacturing system has a great impact on the performance measurement and the selection of the objectives to measure the performance is very important. These objectives include the critical requirements for a RMS and they are as follows: product cost, manufacturing response, system productivity, people behavior, inventory, and quality of the finished products. Because each criterion measure in a RMS is a potential source of evaluation, it should have a relative weight with respect ...

Identifying challenges facing manufacturing enterprises toward implementing sustainability in newly industrialized countries

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to present and identify the challenges toward implementing sustainability strategies both strategic and tactical (STs) and performance measures (PMs) facing industrial organizations in newly industrialized countries. Design/methodology/approach Conducting a comprehensive survey on the published papers focused on the area of sustainability and/or sustainable development (S/SD) in manufacturing enterprises to identify the most common critical challenges. Setting with industrialists to determine which challenges the industrial organizations facing while implementing the S/SD strategies in terms of strategic, tactic and PMs. Using support logic techniques such as interpretive structural modeling (ISM) and interpretive ranking process (IRP) as modeling approaches to examine the contextual relationship among the STs and PMs individually “first phase,” to clarify and identify the most and least dominant factors, and to rank STs with respect to the PMs “second phase.” Findings The investigation shows that some challenges are more dominant and influential. Literacy and an awareness of sustainability, globalization and international issues and competitive strategies have emerged as the most dominant and key driving factors for STs in the ISM model, while the whole PMs are driven by remanufacturing and recycling factors in the ISM model. In addition, drivers and barriers to implementing S/SD challenges received the highest rank in the IRP model. Research limitations/implications Most of the STs and PMs were identified from academicians. Most of the manufacturing companies participated in the discussion; unfortunately, all are not familiar with the S/SD as a whole. They see to the S/SD from very narrow scope like climate change, environmental and energy issues only based on what they heard from media. Most of them are not fully interested to join with academicians to progress the work. Practical implications Most of the manufacturing companies are keen to investigate extremely sustainability challenges. Although this paper has a goal to provide a comprehensive framework to analyze, investigate and model sustainability challenges for industrial/manufacturing companies in different industrial sectors, most of the STs and PMs were identified from academicians. Most of the industrial/manufacturing companies participated in the discussion; unfortunately, all are not familiar with the S/SD as a whole. This study will help manufacturing/industrial companies to analyze and investigate the challenges toward implementing S/SD. Originality/value The originality of this paper is to identify the most common ST and PM challenges facing industrial organization toward implementing S/SD, modeling them into logical techniques and comparing between STs with respect to PMs.