Is Sustainability in Operations Just a Question of Adopting Standards?

Abstract

The overwhelming issue of sustainability in business activities has over the last few years transformed organisational goals to cover far broader areas compared to narrow result areas looked upon as business drivers in the past. It has also led to a proliferation of generic and organisational sustainability standards applied across all disciplines of business activities. The intention behind such standardisation of activities is primarily to restrict or avoid wastage of resources - in whatever form or substance, which also in a way homogenises the environment. In Operations Management, it assumes significance and this brings to the fore the concept of life cycle management (LCM) for sustainable business. In the context, even though LCM per se is not novel it is proposed to evaluate product and process life cycle management methodologies within a broad perspective provided in part by the generic standards for sustainable businesses. Further the digital revolution has advanced to such a stage that it is rather a data revolution that is happening through embedded computing intelligence developed through the inventive methods of information management and computing. An opportunity for organisations to dovetail operations management into sustainable practices has been opened up through the availability of such information management methodologies and computational intelligence. A brief ontological substrate for building sustainable business processes in the life cycle management perspective provides possible ways of furthering sustainable operations management. A short summary of the sustainable OM efforts in manufacturing being pursued all over the world gives a perspective on the imperative change in operations management.

Keywords: Sustainablility, Operations, Computing, Life Cycle

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