Faculty of Engineering - Department of Industrial

This project provides an assessment framework for measuring sustainability in
manufacturing enterprises. Empirical work was conducted through implementing the
proposed framework in modern irrigation system firm in order to analysis the major issues
associated with dimensions of sustainability and its indicators for identifying areas of
improvements. There are three main issues were founded that needed improvement to
raise the level of sustainability in the firm. The first issue is improving material utilization
through implementing six sigma methodology to reduce wall thickness variation of
irrigation pipes. The second issue is improving time utilization through implementing
Single Minute Exchange of Die (SMED) concept to reduce non-value-added time during
changeover of die regarding extrusion process. The third issue is raising the power
efficiency through upgrading the mica band heaters to ceramic band heaters in order to
reduce energy consumption and heat losses during manufacturing process. Finally,
revaluating the sustainability index of the firm and comparing it with old one for
monitoring the level of sustainability along time to ensure the continuous improvement.