Apr. 2005, Volume 4, No.4 (Serial No.

22) Chinese Business Review, ISSN 1537-1506, USA

22
The Research on System for Green Manufacturing Assessment
*

Qingshan Zhang
**
Wei Xu
***
Shenyang University of Technology
Abstract: In the 20th century, manufacturing industries created a great amount of wealth for mankind, but
they also caused the serious environmental pollution. Therefore, the implementation of green manufacturing will
be imperative for manufacturing industries in the 21st century. The philosophy of sustainable development is
necessarily and importantly used in the enterprise survival and progress. So, the green manufacturing prevails in
the whole world, which appeals to the research from lots of experts and governments. However, how we can
assess the green degree of the product becomes a significant problem to us. From the sustainable development
view, it is pointed out in this paper how an enterprise can properly assess the green degree of the green products,
which uses different indexes to measure the different influence.
Key words: green manufacturing green degree integrated index stage index
1. Introduction
From the 1960s, the global economy has been increasing at a high speed, which never appears in the past.
Nevertheless, the greenhouse effect, the sour rain, the destruction of the ozone in air, air and water pollution have
come up to us, because we ignored the environment protection. Furthermore, the greatest number of waste in both
industrial produce and energy is also the global problem that we have to face. Those problems have become threat
to the human beings existence. From the statistics investigated by the experts, lots of non-renewable resources
will be used up in the 21st century, for instance, oil, coal and some other minerals. Meanwhile, the life cycles of a
great many products have been shorten, leading to the increment of the waste of products. The 70 percent of waste
materials, which result in the environment pollution, come from the process in producing and using the industrial
products. Every year, there are 6 billion harmless matters and 800 million harmful matters to be produced. The
traditional method for protecting environment is the terminal control, which is a remedy. But, this method cannot
take on the obligation for sustainable development fundamentally. If we want to thoroughly solve the problem of
environment pollution, we have to take a preventive harness from the beginning.
We need to research on each stage in details from the design stage: the raw and semi-finished materials, energy,
the cost for installment and maintenance, the capacity for department, and recycle ability. Nowadays, the GM (Green
Manufacturing) which is prevailing in the whole world can meet the magnificent desire that human being will set up
a philosophy of sustainable development. Those reasons are bound to bring up the revolution in manufacturing
industry. The Green Barrier (GB) has turned to the main non-tariff barriers in lots of developed countries. As a
method in the international competition, the GB would provide standards, which assume an image of rules. The

*
This paper is supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (No.70472034).
**
Qingshan Zhang, male, Master, prof. and dean of Institute of Management, Shenyang University of Technology; Main research field:
R&D of System for Green Manufacturing Assessment; Address: No.58, Xinghua South Street, Shenyang, Liaoning, China, Postcode:
110023; Tel: 024-25691898.
***
Wei Xu, male, postgraduate of Institute of Management, Shenyang University of Technology; Main research field: Synthetic
Assessment of Green Manufacturing; Address: No.58, Xinghua South Street, Shenyang, Liaoning, China, Postcode: 110023; Tel:
13604189114; E-mail: xuwei800224@sohu.com.
The Research on System for Green Manufacturing Assessment
23
positive tendency that lots of scholars study the GM indicates that the prospect is imaginable. Therefore, the
integrated index is in need, which can reflect the friendly degree of the product to environment. If we can measure
the index and use it in the manufacture and consumption, it will provide the judgment, which guides us to select or
desert the design program for manufacturing. This activity will accelerate the transform in industry, because every
enterprise will make itself achieve the index, which is formulated by the government. So, the phenomenon of
environment pollution will decrease. Now, this paper provides a simple method to measure the green degree.
2. Green Products
2.1 Green Products
The Green Index (GI) of the green product runs through the whole process of the product life cycle, so the
Green Assessment must face the whole life cycle. It is not only the assessment of finished product, but also a
continuous assessing process, which inspects green attributes in every phase of manufacturing from designing to
finishing in order to enhance the green degree.
2.2 The System of Assessment for Green Degree
The System of assessment for GD contains those ingredients as follows: basic index and society index. Basic
index: It is defined as the capacity index according to the need of matters and consumers, which mainly contains
function index and quality index. This index reflects the basic capacity of the products. There are two targets in
the assessment: to incorporate all aspects of product quality, functions, economic value and degree of
environmental friendliness into an assessment, and to study the impact of the products on the environment
throughout the complete product life cycle.
Environment index: This is the striking feature that reflects the differences between the green products and
traditional products. Environment index contains water index, air index, soil index, noise index and ecology index.
Resources index: In this index, resource is a broad sense definition, which contains material resources,
equipment resources, information resources and personnel resources, which are the basic conditions of GM. The
material index contains the utilization ratio of materials and the kinds of materials, which reflect the efficiency of
materials in the GM. Equipment resource contains the utilization ratio of equipment and the optimal arrangement
of equipment resources, which is an important facet that can measure the rationalization of the manufacturing
organization for green products. Personnel index and information index mainly reflect the level of staff and the
obligation of the enterprise for society and consumers.
Energy index: Saving energy and efficiently using energy are other striking features of GM. If the amount of
energy used in manufacturing decreases, it will mean the resource increasing. The energy index contains the kind
of energy in manufacturing and maintaining, the energy cost of producing, the energy cost of transporting,
maintaining, the ratio of renewable energy and the ratio of green energy used in product life cycle.
Economy index: The economic function of GM is considered in the whole life cycle obviously, and there is a
clear boundary between GM and traditional methods. So, the model of assessing green degree reflects all the
features in product life cycle. The cost of Green Product is made up of manufacturing cost, maintaining cost and
social cost.
Society index: Besides those indexes, which have been written above, we need to consider the development
of society. Because a great many products are connected with culture, morality, ethical relations, society stability
and society progress, the system of assessing in GM must be attached importance to the social attributes, which
The Research on System for Green Manufacturing Assessment
24
are significant in it.
3. The Standard of Assessing Green Product
3.1 Standards
Setting up the standard of assessing is an important segment of green product assessment. Nowadays,
because there are no identical organizations about green product, there is no identical standard about the
assessment. However, the relevant standard will appear quickly along with the development of organization and
progress of research. For example, the ISO14000 is an international standard about environment quality index for
product, which is in the drafting process and will be perfected step by step. Now, we can take national,
ministry-level, and field-level standards added with correlation (some environment indexes, energy index and so
forth) as temporary standards. Taking environment index as an example, we can select the concrete figure
according to the national or field-level fixed through the traditional product and statistic data.
3.2 Assessment about Different Stages of Green Products
The sectional environments of Green Product are different in each stage of life cycle. The influences are mutual
activities for different sectional environments. In a certain sectional environment, the influence that is generated in
this stage may aggravate or alleviate the influence from others. Therefore, we can take the whole environment as
assembly of different sections, and in this method, the environment can be divided into different parts, in order to
enhance the accuracy of the assessing. Meanwhile, the workload will reduce through the simplification of those
indexes. In this paper, the whole life cycle of green product is divided into 3 stages as follows:
(1) Producing stage. In this stage, the main considered elements are raw material consumed in product
manufacturing and the influence on environment by technology. The location of manufacturer is main extent
affected by manufacturing.
(2) Maintaining Stage. Human being applies the ultimate target of products effectively. Especially, there are
some products having long life cycle to use. For instance, because a car can be used for a long time, it is inevitable
that lots of influences will occur in the maintaining stage, which is longer than the manufacturing stage. In this stage,
the main elements that we consider are energy and exhaustion. The location of user is main environment for
researching.
(3) Recycling stage. When products are out of use, they become to be the garbage. On one side, they maybe
pollute environment; on the other side, they may provide material or energy for other product manufacturing. In
this stage, the location, which has obligation to recycle them, is the main center for analyzing.
3.3 The Diagram of Execution
Because the indexes are fixed, we could refrain from blindness. Because the life cycle is divided into stages,
the system will have a good operative function.
From Figure 1, we can see the system of assessing. We need to analyze figures about input and output of all
the technology and consumption, when we access the environment influence of a certain stage in product life
cycle. Then, the operator can gain a detailed list and class these ingredients into different tables. In this step, there
are 6 parts (tables) about basis, environment, recourses, energy, economy and society respectively. We measure
the figures of different indexes in accordance with ratio method. Benefit: because we have concrete indexes, we
can get the single index (KI) for a certain kind, which is concerned by us. It is supposed to add priority into this
system. Because we have divided the whole life cycle into 3 stages, we can gain the comprehensive index (SI) for
The Research on System for Green Manufacturing Assessment
25
a certain stage. Moreover, we can get the integrated index (MI).












Figure 1 Detailed List of Figures about Input and Output

Table 1 Indexes of Product Life Cycle
Label Producing stage Maintaining stage Recycling stage Kind index
Basic index A
1
A
2
A
3
A
1
+A
2
+A
3

Environment index B
1
B
2
B
3
B
1
+B
2
+B
3

Resources index C
1
C
2
C
3
C
1
+C
2
+C
3

Energy index D
1
D
2
D
3
D
1
+D
2
+D
3

Economy index E
1
E
2
E
3
E
1
+E
2
+E
3

Society index F
1
F
2
F
3
F
1
+F
2
+F
3

Stage Multiple index
A
1
P
1
+B
1
P
2
+C
1
P
3
+D
1
P
4
+E
1
P
5
+F
1
P
6

A
2
P
1
+B
2
P
2
+C
2
P
3
+D
2
P
4
+E
2
P
5
+F
2
P
6

A
3
P
1
+B
3
P
2
+C
3
P
3
+D
3
P
4
+
E
3
P
5
+F
3
P
6


Multiple index MI=(A
1
+A
2
+A
3
)P
1
+(B
1
+B
2
+B
3
)P
2
+(C
1
+C
2
+C
3
)P
3
+(D
1
+D
2
+D
3
) P
4
+ (E
1
+E
2
+E
3
) P
5
+(F
1
+F
2
+F
3
) P
6

In Table 1, MI reflects the green degree of PLC, A
i
reflects the basic index in stage I, B
i
reflects the
environment index in stage I, and so on. P
i
reflects the importance of feature index. (P
1
+P
2
+P
3
+P
4
+P
5
+P
6
=1)
3.4 The Core Principle
(1) Selecting the target for accessing and choosing the type for accessing
Namely, we do an integrated analysis for a specific product or for choosing a good product from lots of the
same kind products. If we only study on the environment capacity of the products of some kinds, some identical
ingredients can be ignored in the assessing. For convenience, the result of comparison will not be affected by the
workflow to improve efficiency.
(2) Fixing the accuracy of assessment
Because there are too many unambiguous factors in the life cycle, if the demand of ultimate index is not very
strict, we can neglect the data that are too difficult to guarantee the accuracy. In this method, we can cut down the
difficulty of accessing.
(3) Defining the scope to assess
It is significance that whether we define a precise scope to do our assessment. This problem has 3 facets in
the system: Firstly, if we study on the location of product as importance, we will consider the environment of
manufacturing, maintaining and recycling as the researching center. Secondly, in the system, we must properly
select the ingredients, because the figures of the different data are needed to deal with different technology, which
Detailed list of figures about input and output
Integrated Index (MI)
Stage1 Stage2 Stage3
Basic Environment Resources Energy Economy Society
Index Index Index Index Index Index
Distributing Priority
The Research on System for Green Manufacturing Assessment
26
we cannot forget. Thirdly, we need consider the periods of manufacturing, maintaining and recycling.
(4) Quantifying the used materials and technology
Specifying every function for different section is an important process. Then, we need to quantify the
relevant technology in the technological tree and suppose the figures of default data.
(5) Determining the priority of different indexes
Because the figures of different indexes usually cannot be simply compared, we need to distribute different
priority to those indexes. This process is the key to the overall situation, which is referred to whether we could
gain a rational integrated index representing the green degree of the product.
4. Conclusion
This accessing system is on the basis of the foreign achievement in this field, which is also related to the
concrete situation of our country. We can gain a series of better indexes about the green product, which reflect the
integrated influence on the environment. The government can take integrated index as a permit to the
manufacturers. If the manufacturer cannot reach the index demanded by government, it will lose the right of
selling its products. This criterion will stimulate the passion of manufacturers to improve the technology, in order
to strengthen the environment consciousness of the public. Meanwhile, it can help the manufacturers to discover
the friendly ingredients to environment, propelling the adaptability of the products.

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(Edited by Joy and Tracy)