Multi-Objective Optimization of the Organization’s Performance for Sustainable Development

Abstract

Sustainable development can be defined in terms of three main components: ecologically sustainable, economically sustainable, and socially sustainable. Conflicting objectives are involved in sustainable development issues, of which the economic, environmental, and social objectives are the most important. Multi-criteria decision-making provides a systematic methodology that combines these conflicting objectives and can provide a rational compromise solution to complex decision-making issues. Using multi-objective optimization, this paper integrated three major objectives of organizational performance, maximizing sales, minimizing expenses, and maximizing productivity, all of which are combined for the sustainable development of the organization. All these conflicting problems were included in an objective function that allowed for solving the three objectives simultaneously and, thus, achieving economic, environmental, and social performance, in order to sustainably develop the organization. The input data included the objectives planned by the company regarding the turnover to be achieved, the production and delivery costs, and the productivity achieved by employees. Customer orders, production capacity, delivery costs, and resource consumption were also taken into account for optimization. With the help of multi-objective linear programming, the optimal number of parts produced and delivered by the company was determined so as to reach its economic, environmental, and social performance.