A Comprehensive Rating Tool for Sustainability Assessment of Manufacturing Organizations: A Step Towards Sustainable Manufacturing

Corporate Sustainability is becoming a key priority for many organizations. Yet, the sustainability rating systems currently used are under intense debate due to the lack of interdependency and standardization, and the presence of subjectivity and financial biases. Here, a sustainability rating tool for manufacturing organizations is developed based on a comprehensive sustainability assessment framework to overcome the aforementioned shortcomings. The framework provides guidance for selecting and quantifying the relevant sustainability indicators that contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals. Objective and subjective weighting methods of sustainability indicators are used to minimize uncertainties linked to pure subjective weighting methods. Interactions and interdependencies among different indicators are captured using Multi Criterion Decision Making Methods. The outcome is a sustainability leaf rating system based on statistical benchmarking approach. The rating system is used to evaluate the sustainability performance of each organization relative to its peers and acts as a baseline for enterprise sustainability performance improvement. A case study is conducted to validate the applicability of the proposed sustainability rating tool. Results show that the rating tool is capable of evaluating the sustainability performance of different organizations in the same industry.