Manufacturing Operations Scheduling Based in a Multidimensional Sustainable Manufacturing Index (SMIik)

Many essential human needs can only be satisfied through goods and services provided by industry. The products of industry form the material basis of contemporary living standards. All nations rightly require and aspire to efficient industrial bases to satisfy changing needs (Brundtland in U N Comm 4:300 [1]). This aspiration has led nations into a race for industrialization, and this race, as well recognized by the Bruntland Report (Our Common Future, 1987), requires the permanent use of raw materials, constant increases in productivity, and generation of material goods in large quantities which have imposed a very high economic cost, as well as a heavy burden of environmental impacts (Brundtland in U N Comm 4:300 [1]). This document presents a production scheduling proposal for a manufacturing system, based on the maximization of the sustainable manufacturing index (SMIik) of each of the products to be manufactured. This model manages to develop a utility function that integrates the main dimensions that make up sustainable business development, offering a broader criterion than just economic utility as an element for making the production decision of a manufacturing system. Furthermore, it restricts this function to product demand and the capacity of the production system. In addition, it determines the existing correlation between the sustainable development (SD) dimensions, leading to the decision taken to seek a favorable correlation between them. This model makes it possible to obtain a production sequence oriented to the prioritization of those products that offer a greater contribution to business sustainability, offering, to decision-maker, a novel and synergic option to production scheduling.