Sustainability And Economic Performance Of The Industry

The present study shows a proposal for constructing an index for the industry, suitable for evaluating its economic-financial performance in terms of the sustainable development philosophy. For this purpose the multi-attribute decision theory was chosen as the methodology that provided the index main structure. Following this methodology a decision tree was built having three main branches or general attributes: financial evaluation, in-walls, and out-walls. Some of the attributes considered within the financial indicators were: economic value added, return of investment, expenses of operation, index of maintenance. Among the indoor indicators there were: power intensity, labor productivity, environmental management, & internal production. For the out-walls indicators we considered: power consumption per capita, regional production and certificate of clean industry, among others. This index was applied to a Mexican refinery, but it was designed so it could be applied to other industries with some modifications. The application of the index allows to identify in a prioritized way the problems that the industry has to solve in order to be congruent with the sustainable development of the region where it is located. Transactions on Ecology and the Environment vol 67, © 2003 WIT Press, www.witpress.com, ISSN 1743-3541