GREEN MANUFACTURING PRACTICES IN BRICK INDUSTRIES: A CASE STUDY USING AHP

Abstract

This paper presents an exploratory study in an environmentally important but less researched Brick industries situated at Ranchi, Jharkhand, India and its outskirts areas having manufacturers within 20 km radius. This study has been done due to ever increasing requirement for organizations to be more environmentally responsive with respect to their product and process planning, design and striving positively towards their competitive outcomes in Real Estate Business. Factors taken into consideration are: Quality/Technology, Recycle/Reuse (water, solid waste), Reduce Energy Use, Reduce Emissions, Reduce Solid Waste, Train employees in sustainability, Encouraging suppliers to use sustainable process. The industries management supported and advised for the weight age of different criteria. All criteria with the simultaneous evaluation of industries were evaluated using Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP) developed by SATTY in 1970’s. which is a powerful and flexible decision making tool for complex, multi criteria problems. Consistency ratio was calculated. Based on Composite Rank Score decisions and recommendations were made. These findings /recommendations can be helpful to different organizations as they respond to environmentally demands

Keywords

Green Manufacturing, Consistency ratio, AHP, Brick Industries.

INTRODUCTION

Commitment to natural environment has become an important variable within the current competitive scenarios. Over decades, there has been a renewed focus and increasingly motivation towards green manufacturing. The opportunities for companies to use green practices to enhance their reputation and strengthen their position in the marketplace constitute the business case for green production. Financial institutions increasingly price companies according to their social & environmental liabilities, thus leading investors to take into consideration corporate green reputation during their acquisition decisions. (Dobers &Wolff, 2000),(Fairchild,2008) [1],[2],[3].There is a growing body of environmental regulations (e.g.in Europe ,ELV 2000,WEEE 2003,RoHS 2003, PPW 2004,EUP 2005,REACH 2007) and also ISO9001,ISO14000, and OHSAS18000 that are forcing companies to reduce their resources consumption, to minimise their waste, and to take responsibility for the take-back of products at the end of the use phase (Kleindorfer et al.,2005;van Hillegerberg et al.,2001)[4]. Porter and Van der linde (1995)[5] provide several examples of how environment focused can help companies use a range of inputs more productively .Such innovations include process enhancements ,more complete material utilisation, design simplification, recycling of scraps.etc. The commercial brick industries has had a long history of environmental challenges ,including heavy use of resources, disposal of manufacturing waste, & disposal of manufacturing waste, & disposal of used products.(Cathy,2007)[6].

There are several green manufacturing practices (criteria’s) which could be considered in case of brick industries for competitive outcomes .The Quality/Technology (Q/T) plays an important role in brick manufacturing as quality and technology are inter dependent, if we use the highly improved technologies such as VSBK (vertical shaft brick kiln) due to which there is efficient heat transfer between bricks and air circulation is possible. Kiln is well insulated on all sides resulting in better output. (VSBK Technology,Sameer Maithel,2007)[7]. In initial phase of brick making process plenty of water is used from blending to separation which can be recycled along with solids remain which can be reused thus justifying Recycling Water/Solid Waste (RC W/S).(Green Brick Making Manual, vsbk,cesef,Nepal)[8]. As the ever increasing requirement, we need to reduce the demand of energy in the whole process as by making of hollow bricks which reduces the mass to be fired thereby reducing the energy consumption thus justifying Reduce Energy Use (REU) (Green Brick Making Manual, vsbk, cesef, Nepal) [8] In any brick firing the source of environmental pollution is the use of external fuel with high sulphur & high ash content as well as incomplete combustion of same releases higher amount of suspended particulate matter in the atmosphere and by using internal fuel emissions can be reduced to certain level thus justifying Reduce Emissions (RE). (Green Brick Making Manual, vsbk, cesef, Nepal). Solid wastes can be controlled by modifications in moulding so that collected remain should be again blended or should be used for other constructive work thus justifying Reduce solid waste (RSW). Training of employees in sustainability (TES) of any firm is the need of the time so that green manufacturing initiatives can cope up the ever increasing demand as they involve the positive attitude of the employees towards environment. Encouraging Suppliers to use sustainable measures (ESUSM) is important because it will directly or indirectly save our environment and the valuable resources as they are the first consumers and the prime motive of the green manufacturing is to reduce the resources utilisation, reduce emissions, and beating the competitive race with sustainable & healthy environment for a greener future. In the process of our evaluation using AHP[10],[11], which has been used extensively for studying case studies, outranking method, promethee method [12],[13][14],[15], around seven industries (AA,BB,CC,DD,EE,FF,GG) are requested to evaluate the impact of the above mentioned factors on the prospects of advantageous green manufacturing and after the evaluation recommendations will be made. We will say about industries ranking which will determine up to what extent they are opting for green manufacturing process factors or criteria’s in their business routine. While we can’t fully say or conclude that answers may reflect the effects of product as well as process innovations, but it can be expected that people/employees tend to have process innovations in mind when answering this question which would reflect the effects of process innovations .More recent empirical studies that find a generally positive relationship between environmental manufacturing process and competitive outcomes [16], [17].

II. METHODOLOGY

AHP is a systematic procedure for representing the elements of any problem hierarchically. The pair wise comparison matrix is of size n×n, where n is number of elements to be compared pair wise. The matrix will be filled up accordingly using the following procedure.

(a) Each element compared with itself will get a value 1.i.e. a(1,1)=a(2,2)=a(3,3)=..a (n,n) =1.

(b) When the ith element is compared with jth element, it has got the value A(i,j), jth element being compared with has got a value a(j,i)=1/a(i,j) .i.e. a(1,2)=1/a(2,1).......a(n,1)=1/a(1,n).

(c) Relative Weight (RW)

(d) Normalized weight (NW) = RW/ΣRW.

(e) Maximum Eigen Value (λMax) = Σ column A × NW value row A +Σ column B × NW value row B +.......+ Σ Column n × NW value row n.

(f) Consistency Index (CI) = (λMax -n)/ (n-1)

(g) Random Index (RI) = 1.98 × (n-2) / n.

(h) Consistency Ratio (CR) = CI/ RI, should be within 10 percent

(i) Composite rank (COR) = NW Parameter 1 weightage × NW of that Parameter + NW Parameter 2 weightage × NW of that Parameter +……. + NW Parameter n weightage × NW of that Parameter.

III. CASE STUDY

This study was conducted on brick industries located near Ranchi, Jharkhand state, India. which deals with the green manufacturing issues, the commercial sector of real estate business is selected because the commercial sector is more advanced with respect to sustainable manufacturing practices; more importantly the methods of recovery and disposal in resident market and also ever increasing demand for the population needs. Some researchers have found that environmental practices may have a negative impact on company’s performance, however other research indicates that being environmentally proactive can produce competitive gains. Criteria for evaluation are Quality/Technology(Q/T) , Recycle/Reuse (water, solid waste) (RC W/S),Reduce Energy Use(REU), Reduce Emissions(RE), Reduce Solid Waste (RSW), Train employees in sustainability(TES), Encouraging suppliers to use sustainable process (ESUSM).

Relative Weight (RW), Normalised Weight (NW)

RW of Q/T is =2.661103

NW of Q/T is 2.661103/8.618956= 0.30875

Similarly RW and NW for other criteria are calculated.

λMax = 7.449093

CI = (λMax - n)/ (n-1) = (7.449093-7)/ (7-1) = 0.074848833

RI = 1.98 × (7-2)/ 7= 1.414285714

CR = CI/RI ×100= 0.052923417% (10% < is acceptable)

Similarly all other values corresponding to (RC W/S), (REU), (RE), (RSW), (TES), (ESUSM) are calculated

Table 1 represents the matrix for weightage to all seven criterias corresponding to green manufacturing. In Table 2- Table 8 relationship matrix for all seven brick companies are calculated corresponding to one criterion at a time. Table 9 represents the relative worth of alternatives.

Table 1: Matrix for weightage to criteria:

Table 2: Relationship Matrix for Q/T

Table 3: Relationship Matrix for RCW/S

Table 4: Relationship Matrix for REU

Table 5: Relationship Matrix for RE

Table 6: Relationship Matrix for RSW

Table 7: Relationship Matrix for TES

Table 8: Relationship Matrix for ESUSM

Table 9: Relative worth of alternatives

*Taking (0.999999503= 1.00 Approximately)

Composite rank (COR) of AA Brick Industry is calculated as:

(0.30875 *0.298435) + (0.197896*0.32174) + (0.192809*0.304589) + (0.111352*0.33504) + (0.08292*0.311634) + (0.068022*0.332241) + (.03825*0.350283) = 0.313686453

Similarly COR was calculated for the Brick Manufacturing Industries (BB ,CC,DD,EE,FF,GG). Maximum COR means most preferred for green manufacturing practices.

Table 10: Rank table

IV. RESULTS & CONCLUSION

As per the composite rank score obtained using the tool AHP (TABLE 10) we can say that A,BB,CC,DD,EE,FF,GG is in the order of most preferred selection for green manufacturing practices and hence by using this we can recommend for the greener manufacturing practicing among investigated Brick industries in our survey. The manufacturing practices in Bricks industries can be incorporated to achieve greenness. The proposed method using AHP among large number of existing manufacturing processes to assess suitability in this case study. AHP not only helps to arrive at best decision but also provides a clear rationale for the choice. This is true for any industry .The proposed method offers more objective, simple and consistent greenness approach. This is very scientific approach and it gives correct results in less time.

References

1. Tim Baines, Steve Brown, Ornella Benedettini, Peter Ball,”Examining green production and its role within the competitive strategy of manufacturers”, JIEM,2012-5(1):53-87
2. Dobers, P., & Wolff, R. (2000). Competing with “soft” issues - from managing the environment to sustainable business strategies. Business Strategy and the Environment, 9(3), 143-150. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/(SICI)1099-0836(200005/06)9:3<143::AID-BSE239>3.0.CO;2-C
3. Fairchild, R. J. (2008). The manufacturing sector's environmental motives: A game-theoretic analysis. Journal of Business Ethics, 79(3), 333- 344. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10551-007-9401-9
4. Kleindorfer, P. R., Singhal, K., & van Wassenhove, L. N. (2005). Sustainable operations management. Production and Operations Management, 14(4), 482-492. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1937-5956.2005.tb00235.x
5. Porter, M. E., & van der Linde, C. (1995). Green and competitive. Harvard Business Review, 73(5), 120-134.
6. Cathy A. Rusinko, ”Green Manufacturing: An Evaluation of Environmentally Sustainable Manufacturing Practices and Their Impacts on competitive outcomes” IEEE,Vol.5,No.3, AUGUST 2007.
7. VSBK Technology Sameer Maithel ,Director’s Forum, Nam Dinh, Vietnam, August 2007, Vietnam Sustainable Brick Project.
8. Vertical shaft brick kiln project: clean building technologies for Nepal (ISBN 3-908156-12-2), 2008.
9. P S Chakraborty, G.Majumder and B sarkar,” Performance evaluation of existing vendors using Analytical Hierarchy Process”, J.of scientific and Industrial Research ,Vol.64, September 2005,pp.648-652.
10. Satty T L ,The Analytical Hierarchy Process (Mc Graw Hill ,New York) 1980.
11. Stty T L How to make decision – AHP Euro J Operat Res 48 (1990) 9-26.
12. Rebstock S E & Kaula R, The effectiveness of an Analytic Hierarchy Process in –group decision making: A case study, Int J Comput Applicat Technol,9 (1996) 95-105.
13. Boer L De, Labro E & Morlacchi P, A review of methods supporting supplier selection, Eur J Purchas Supp Manage , 7, (2001) 75-89.
14. Boer L De,Wegen L V Der & Telgen J, Outranking methods in support of supplier selection ,Eur J Purchas Supp Manage ,4 (1998) 109-118.
15. Babic Z & Plazibat N,Ranking of enterprises based on multi criteria analysis, Int J Product Ecom, 56-57 (1998) 29-35.
16. S. A. Melnyk, R.P. Sroufe ,and R.J. Calantone,” Assessing the impact of environmental management systems on corporate and environmental performance ,” J.Oper, Manage., vol.21,pp., 329-51,2003.
17. B. Menguc and L. K. Ozanne, “Challenges of the “green imperative”: A natural resourcebased approach to the environmental orientationbusiness performance relationship,” J. Bus. Res., 2003.