Integrated Environmental and Economic Performance Assessment

Our research group seeks to understand how corporations can effect long-term commitments to economic prosperity and sustainability; and in particular, how such corporate commitments cascade through the organization and are implemented from the boardroom to the shop floor of the manufacturing facility. Our long-term goal is to examine the corporation from a sustainability perspective, where we would define “performance” as the relative effectiveness of a mill or enterprise in transforming its capital resources – financial, technological, natural, and social – into value-added products and processes. Using the funds provided by the Center for Paper Business and Industry Studies, our group is exploring the development of decision support tools that provide simultaneous views of production, economic, and environmental data from a paper mill. Our hypothesis is that tools that efficiently align production, economic, and environmental data will provide greater insight into the dynamic relationship between economic and environmental effects of proposed changes (technological and/or operational) in a mill and, thereby, allow for more informed decisions involving trade-offs. The focus of this presentation is on two case studies that explore the potential for integrated production, economic, and environmental performance assessments to support decision making by mill managers.