Integration of Eco-Efficiency and Efficiency Assessment Methodologies: The Efficiency Framework

The overall aim of the Efficiency Framework is to encourage a culture of continuous improvement and sustainability within manufacturing and process industries. The framework presented supports informed decision-making processes and helps to define strategies for continuous performance improvement. The proposed innovative Efficiency Framework, materialized through the integration of concepts and results provided by eco-efficiency methodology, namely Eco-Efficiency Integrated Methodology for Production Systems (ecoPROSYS) and the lean based resource efficiency assessment method, Multi-layer Stream Mapping (MSM). Thus, the framework assesses simultaneously the environmental, economic and efficiency performance of complex production systems, which helps to identify major inefficiencies and circumstances of low eco-efficiency performance, consequently leading to the definition of improvement priorities. Ultimately, this framework aims to facilitate the overall efficiency performance assessment, by an integrated multi-dimensional analysis, presented as the Total Efficiency Index. The logic behind this index is to combine, for each unit process and for the overall production process, two fundamental efficiency aspects, namely eco-efficiency and operations efficiency.