Building sustainability maturity model
Student name: Ms Ronil Chhikara
Guide: Dr Nandini Kumar
Year of completion: 2010
Host Organisation: Wipro Technologies
Abstract: Sustainable development is meeting the needs of the present without
compromising the ability of the future generations to meet their own needs:
Brundtland Report. We get to hear the term “sustainable development†in every part
of the living world. By gone are those days when the sole motive of the businesses
was profit making. If the planet needs life, and habitable conditions along with
development, sustainable manufacturing needs to be brought into picture. For ages,
humans have been manufacturing goods and technologies that are using earth’s
resources without caring much about Earth’s carrying capacity and replenishment of
the used up resources. It is high time that we start thinking about the planet earth, its
environment and the growing problem of pollution. We need to understand that the
resources on earth are finite and should learn to use them judiciously. We also need
to understand that the products and services we are manufacturing on this planet
should be in harmony with the nature and not degrade its natural environment.
Sustainability maturity model is the categorisation of the various manufacturing
firms into 5 different stages on the basis of the efforts they have been putting to
manufacture green products and carry out green manufacturing processes, thus
making their organisation a sustainable manufacturing firm. The first stage is the
most naïve one, with firms which are trying to get into the sustainable manufacturing
business. The successive stages are the ones which have started on green
manufacturing and are picking up, using better and efficient technologies, making
energy efficient and less waste producing products and using cleaner processes. The
ones on the highest stages are the best among the green manufacturing firms,
complying with all the standards and practicing green manufacturing in all aspects.
The model thus takes into considerations all the key performance indicators of
sustainable manufacturing, the environmental, social and economic aspects. Under
the environmental KPIs, that help in differentiating between the stages of maturity
model comes the, optimum use of land and water, managing air emissions, proper
waste disposal, rain water harvesting, green supply chain management, transport
management, recycling and reuse of materials. Under the social KPIs, we include the
social development of the employees, their health and safety issues and accident and
emergency handling. The economic KPIs include the cost of manufacturing the final
products, the money spent on renewable energy sources, investments on setting up
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rain water harvesting plants, recycling plants, revenues the firm earns on making
green products. Sustainable manufacturing had become one the most important
concepts among the different manufacturing businesses in the last decade and it is
expected to gain acceleration in the following years.
Key words: Sustainability, Key performance Indicators (KPIs), green manufacturing,
renewable energy, clean technology.
