Evaluation of green maintenance initiatives in design and development of mechanical systems using an integrated approach

The growing public concern on global environmental degradation is forcing many industries to undertake environmentally conscious policies for product design, manufacturing, service and end-of-life activities. Maintenance is a critical activity carried out in the use phase of the product life cycle to prolong system availability. The increasing amount of repairs and maintenance of machinery has become a burden on the environment. Therefore, green maintenance driven product design and maintenance actions are critically important; and organizations are now looking for methods and tools to assess the sustainability aspects of their design and operation. This paper presents an objective approach to evaluate green maintenance aspects of mechanical systems at its design stage and rank the design alternatives. It takes into consideration the green maintenance requirements, environment conscious attributes and their interrelationships. The evaluation problem is formulated as a multi-attribute decision-making model and solved using analytical hierarchy process (AHP) and the technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) approach. The proposed approach starts with applying AHP method to evaluate the importance of green maintenance requirements during maintenance. Then the relationships between the requirements and design characteristics are established and the TOPSIS method is adopted to rank the design alternatives.