Hot Topics for Sustainability in the IE Research Agenda

Hot Topics for Sustainability in the IE Research AgendaEliseo Vilalta-PerdomoUniversity of Lincoln, UK

John CorlissPEER Consultants, PC

62nd Annual IIE Conference and Expo Orlando, FL, May 19-23, 2012


Outline Aim of this presentation Sustainability

The genealogy Dimensions Complementary or In Conflict Languages Potential contributions’ matrix

Industrial Engineering Current position Current sources of improvement Potential unique contributions of IE professionals

Sustainability Division, IIE Potential contribution Future steps


Aims of this presentation to identify which part of the IE body of

knowledge can contribute most effectively to sustainable development, and

an initial exploration to recognize some “hot topics” that constitute the future of IE research and professional agendas


SustainabilityGenealogy

Malthus, 1798,

“It has been said that the great question is now at issue, whether man shall henceforth start forwards with accelerated velocity towards illimitable, and hitherto unconceived improvement, or be condemned to a perpetual oscillation between happiness and misery, and after every effort remain still at an immeasurable distance from the wished-for goal”.

Brundtland Report (March, 1987)

“to propose long-term environmental strategies for achieving sustainable development by the year 2000 and beyond”

United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, June 1992

“a comprehensive plan of action to be taken globally, nationally and locally by organizations of the United Nations System, Governments, and Major Groups in every area in which human impacts on the environment”

Global Conference on the Sustainable Development of Small Island Developing States, May-June 1994

“sustainable development programmes must seek to enhance the quality of life of peoples, including their health, well-being and safety”.

Programme for the Further Implementation of Agenda 21, June 1997

Included economic, social and environmental objectives in the sustainable development agenda

UN Millennium Declaration, 2000

Key objectives in relation to peace, security and disarmament; development and poverty eradication; protecting our common environment; human rights, democracy and good governance; protecting the vulnerable; meeting the special needs of Africa, and strengthening the United Nations

Millennium Development Goals 2005

Different strategies and actions to end poverty and hunger; universal education; gender quality; child health; maternal health; combat HIV/AIDS; environmental sustainability, and global partnership

Club of Rome, 1968

The Limits to Growth. First environmental best-seller

IE Research & Professional agendas on sustainability, 2012

What is (ought to be) the Engineering Research Agenda to Support Sustainable Improvement?What are (ought to be) the contributions from the Industrial Engineering discipline?


PEOPLE

PLANET PROFIT

SustainabilityDimensions

Bearable

Viable

Equitable

Sustainable

(Elkington, 2004)

Bearable: affordable development that increases quality of life

Equitable: provides similar opportunities to everybody

Viable: runs its activities in the long-term


PEOPLE

PLANET PROFIT

SustainabilityComplementary or In Conflict

Resource Conflict

Deve

lopmen

t

Confl

ict

Property

Conflict


Quality of Life

(bearable)

Globalization

(equitable)

Impact(viable)

SustainabilityLanguages

Language of

global warming?

Lang

uage

of

deci

sion

-mak

ing

Language ofconsensus

Capital:• Local vs. global• Standardization• Lost cost

Knowledge• Internal vs. external• Acquisition,

codification, recovery & use

Efficiency & effectiveness• Lean vs. agile• Low-cost

ENVIRONMENT(Planet)

ECONOMY(Profit)

SOCIETY(people)

Trade-offs

Shared valueScien

ce


SOCIAL SCIENCES

TECHNICAL SCIENCES

ECONOMIC SCIENCES

Industrial EngineeringDimensions

Ergonomics

Quality

Management

Industrial Engineering

Quality: process that does well what it is designed to do

Management: process of dealing with or control-ling things or peopleErgonomics: design to optimize human well-being & overall system performance


Society Economy Environment

People Coordination (language)

Profit Equitable Decision-making (language)

Planet Bearable Viable Natural laws (language)

Effectiveness

SustainabilityPotential contributions’ matrix

Environmental perspective

IE perspective?

Effectiveness

Efficiency

Effectiveness Sustainability

Efficiency


Industrial engineeringCurrent position IE professionals have a ‘multidisciplinary’ agenda, as

they study the design, improvement, and installation of integrated systems of people, materials, information, equipment, and energy (IIE definition).

Active presence of its professionals in the sustainability facets: Economic evaluations Environmental aspects have also been included and

coded -e.g. ISO 14000. Social concerns are considered in current engineering

research agenda, -e.g. participatory design.


Industrial engineeringCurrent sources for improvement EFFECTIVENESS. “A dimension of

organizational performance involving the ability to choose and achieve appropriate goals”.

EFFICIENCY. “A dimension of organizational performance involving the ability to make the best use of available resources in the process of achieving goals”.

SUSTAINABILITY. To be developed


What is sustainability?A look at IIE transactionsUnder the query of “sustainability” we find… T.C. Woo (1997) Review of: “Re-engineering for Sustainable

Industrial Production”, L.M. Camarinha-Matos (ed.) Chapman & Hall. John Jackman (1997) Review of: “Modeling Techniques for Business

Process Re-engineering and Benchmarking”, Guy Doumeingts and Jim Browne (eds) Chapman & Hall.

Kenneth N. McKay & Thomas E. Morton (1997) Review of: “Critical Chain”, Eliyahu M. Goldratt The North River Press Publishing Corporation, Great Barrington, MA, 1997.

Ki-Joo Kim & Urmila M. Diwekar (2002) ‘Hammersley stochastic annealing: efficiency improvement for combinatorial optimization under uncertainty’, IIE Transactions,34(9), pp. 761-777

Irad Ben-Gal, Roni Katz & Yossi Bukchin (2008) ‘Robust eco-design: A new application for air quality engineering’, IIE Transactions, 40(10), pp. 907-918

Alan G. Hawkes, Lirong Cui & Zhihua Zheng (2011) ‘Modeling the evolution of system reliability performance under alternative environments’, IIE Transactions, 43(11), pp. 761-772


What is sustainability?A look at IIE transactionsKi-Joo Kim & Urmila M. Diwekar (2002) ‘Hammersley stochastic annealing: efficiency improvement for combinatorial optimization under uncertainty’, IIE Transactions,34(9), pp. 761-777 This paper presents hierarchical improvements to combinatorial

stochastic annealing algorithms using a new and efficient sampling technique. The Hammersley Sequence Sampling (HSS) technique is used for updating discrete combinations, reducing the Markov chain length, determining the number of samples automatically, and embedding better confidence intervals of the samples. The improved algorithm, Hammersley stochastic annealing, can significantly improve computational efficiency over traditional stochastic programming methods. This new method can be a useful tool for large-scale combinatorial stochastic programming problems. A real-world case study involving solvent selection under uncertainty illustrates the usefulness of this new algorithm.


What is sustainability?A look at IIE transactionsIrad Ben-Gal, Roni Katz & Yossi Bukchin (2008) ‘Robust eco-design: A new application for air quality engineering’, IIE Transactions, 40(10), pp. 907-918 The method of robust design has long been used for the design of

systems that are insensitive to noises. In this paper it is demonstrated how this approach can be used to obtain a robust eco-design (ecological design). In a case study, robust design principles are applied to the design of a factory smokestack, using the Gaussian Plume Model (GPM). The GPM is a well-known model for describing pollutant dispersal from a point source, subject to various atmospheric conditions. In this research, the mean-square-error (MSE) of the accumulated and the maximum pollution values around a given target are defined as the performance measures and used to adjust the design parameters. Both analytical and numerical approaches are used to evaluate the MSE measures over the design space. It is demonstrated how to use the non-linearity in the GPM to reach a low MSE value that produces a cheaper design configuration. The differences between the manufacturer viewpoint and the environmentalist viewpoint with respect to the considered eco-design problem are discussed and analyzed.


What is sustainability?A look at IIE transactionsAlan G. Hawkes, Lirong Cui & Zhihua Zheng (2011) ‘Modeling the evolution of system reliability performance under alternative environments’, IIE Transactions, 43(11), pp. 761-772 The dynamics of a system represented by a finite-state Markov

process operating under two alternating regimes, for example, day/night, machine working/machine idling, etc., are modeled in this article. The transition rate matrices under the two regimes will usually be different. Also, the set of states of the system that are regarded as satisfactory may depend on the regime in operation: for example, a particular state of the system that may be regarded as satisfactory by day might not be tolerated at night (e.g., the headlights on a car not working). It is assumed that the regime durations are random variables and results are obtained for the availability of such a system and probability distributions for uptimes. Results and numerical examples are also given for two special cases: (i) when the regimes are of fixed duration; and (ii) when the regime durations have negative exponential distributions.


What is sustainability?A look at IIE transactions As the flagship journal of the Institute of Industrial Engineers, IIE

Transactions publishes original high-quality papers on a wide range of topics of interest to industrial engineers who want to remain current with the state-of-the-art technologies. The refereed journal aims to foster the engineering community by publishing papers with a strong methodological focus motivated by real problems that impact engineering practice and research. Published monthly, the journal is composed of four focus issues: Design and Manufacturing, Operations Engineering and Analysis, Quality and Reliability Engineering, and Scheduling and Logistics.

IIE Transactions encourages research motivated by critical and complex engineering problems that arise in a wide variety of domains including service, public policy, health care, security, biotechnology, transportation, and others. The journal publishes papers that integrate industrial engineering with other disciplines including statistics, other engineering disciplines, computer science, biological science, and operations research. Articles covering new methodologies and state-of-the-art surveys are included in the journal.


What is sustainability?At 2011 IIE Conference-ISERC

Dimension Topic PapersContribution

Topic Dimension

Economic

Sustainability in Supply Chains 6 18%

56%Sustainability through Systems 5 15%Modelling a Sustainable Solution 3 9%Economics of Sustainability 3 9%Life Cycle Assessment 2 6%

EnvironmentalEmergy - Basic Metric of Sustainability Evaluation 3 9% 18%Environmental Sustainability 3 9%

Social Community operational research 9 26% 26%

34 100%


What is sustainability?IE professional & researchersIs it then the

economy/environment relation what are we looking at?

Where is the social dimension?

Unique integrated systems perspective?

What is sustainability?IE professional & researchersPotential role of the Sustainability Division: To become a source for better-informed sustainable decisions:

Should we buy roses from Holland or Kenya?

Kenya: 2,200kg CO2 emissions53,000 megajoules (15% fossil)4,237 estimated food miles

Holland: 35,000kg CO2 emissions550,000 megajoules (>99% fossil)221 estimated food miles

Note: According to Williams (2007) for 12,000 roses

$100 million USD annually injected ondeprived Kenyan communities

Is this the right question?


Potential unique contributions of IE professionalsPolicy makers and others

are more comfortable in their silos

Industrial Engineers are trained to take a systems view and deal with compound complex systems


Potential unique contributions of IE professionalsMost Engineers are

uncomfortable at the top of the food chain

Industrial Engineers are Visionary

• Icon Consultants

• Industry Peers

• Accounting Firms

• Industry Practitioners

• Industry Associates

• Regulating Organizations

• Architects

• Engineering Firms

Board f Directors

CEO

Business Units

Operations

Projects

RFPs

• Vision, Mission, Policies and Strategies

• Goals, Priorities, Measures

• Operational Procedures and Objectives

• Projects to Achieve Objectives

• Implement(Bill Wallace, 2010)


Sustainability divisionPotential contribution Some potential tasks for the

Sustainability Division:1. Define the concept of SUSTAINABILITY in

the IE context -- What is IIE’s definition of sustainability

2. Identify Hot Topics:• IE Tools which, with or without

modification, are applicable to Sustainability

• Fields where IE research and practice can excel


Sustainability divisionFuture steps To test different proposition with the rest

of our colleagues Website-based survey?

To participate in the Sustainability Division (SD) To identify the role and purpose of the SD To be an active contributor in SD


Thank your for your attentionQuestions?Comments?

Hot Topics for Sustainability in the IE Research Agenda

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