Index of Economic and Functional Efficiency of a Sustainable Production Line

The work presented in this paper consists of a proposal for a Sustainable Economic Index Function (EIF), to be applied on a production line. To this end, this study is based on the concepts of the virtual cell and sustainable production or corporate social responsibility. For the formulation of this indicator, whose purpose is that of constituting a tool of assistance in the decision-making process at different levels of the company's hierarchy, three fundamental aspects of sustainable production, or Triple Bottom Line (TBL), have been taken into account: production, the environment and society. An index function was formulated for each of these criteria, which gathers the most important aspects from the economic perspective of each of the three aspects considered. (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier Ltd.