PROMETHEE based sustainable concept selection

Manufacturing organisations started recognising the importance of sustainability concepts: This is due to increasing government regulations and the consciousness of the sustainable products among the customers. In general, the sustainability concepts are classified into economic, environment and social perspectives. The classification of sustainable concept concerning to manufacturing firms can be material oriented, product design oriented and manufacturing process oriented. Sustainable concept selection is a vital problem for the contemporary manufacturing organisations. The selection process includes multiple criteria, therefore a Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) method namely, PROMETHEE (Preference Ranking Organisational Method for Enrichment Evaluation) is used in the study to select the best sustainable concept considering the criteria from social, economical and natural perspectives. The study revealed that the change of material as the best orientation and it implies that the material should be done at the first stage to achieve sustainability in the case organisation. (C) 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.