Evaluation of environmentally benign production program in the textile-dyeing industry (II): A multi-objective programming approach

The ways for improving a cost-effective industrial production program described in an earlier paper primarily focused on the quality assurance/ quality control (QA/QC) schemes within the manufacturing stage. However, industry with high demand of resources input must evolve the essential production strategies to meet the goals in an environmentally benign production program. This paper describes the method and procedure for optimizing a textile-dyeing manufacturing process with respect to the potential impact of pollution charges, resources conservation fees, production cost, inventory cost, and the limitations of production capacity simultaneously. The optimal production strategy concerning numerous screening processes of those production alternatives in terms of market demand, production technology, and resources allocation is treated as an integral part in the multi-objective decision analysis. Facing the growing impact of rising environmental costs and the awareness of implications of industrial ecology, the case-study designed for a textile-dyeing factory in Central Taiwan demonstrates the application potential of a multi-objective evaluation method. It also emphasizes that the employed cost-effectiveness assessment framework can not only consider the conventional costs but also include the hidden costs, such as emission/effluent charges and water resources conservation fees to address the impacts of economic instruments. The research findings clearly indicate that apart from the concern of conventional cost accounting, enterprises facing the challenge of new environmental regulations and policy, which are designed to internalize the external cost in the society, and changing production requirements should employ such an optimal production assessment to enhance their competitiveness.