Sustainable manufacturing indicator repository

Sustainable manufacturing promotes manufacturing processes that minimize environmental and social impacts while maintaining economic benefits. To achieve this, manufacturers seek metrics and measurement methods to enable them to track the progress and manage their manufacturing processes and product designs. A number of indicator sets have been devised to analyze and score sustainable manufacturing; however, presence of many indicator sets has created difficulty in selecting the appropriate set. This paper presents a sustainability indicator repository, called Sustainable Manufacturing Indicator Repository (SMIR), an integration and extension of thirteen popular sustainability indicator sets. From an extensive review of publicly available indicator sets, the SMIR is based on five dimensions of sustainability: environmental stewardship, economic growth, social well-being, technological advancement, and performance management. The purpose of the SMIR is to provide an organized set of centralized, Web-based, open, and neutral indicators that can be accessible by small and medium size manufacturing enterprises. The SMIR can be an application as well as educational tool for manufacturers by providing them with necessary information on in-process and off-line sustainability measures.