Research instrument design for performance measures of green manufacturing practices in India - a pilot study

Green manufacturing (GM) is a terminology that minimises waste and pollution. It emphasises on the use of processes that do not pollute the environment or harm consumers, employees, or other members of the community. GM is fast emerging as the sustainable manufacturing solution that has the potential to solve most problems that the world faces today. A pilot survey was undertaken by the authors in mid 2011 to determine the extent of awareness and implementation of GM practices within various manufacturing industries in central India. In this paper an approach is made to develop an instrument to find the status of awareness and implementation of GM in India. It also aims at developing and validating performance measures for GM in the Indian context that could be used by manufacturers in assessing and improving their environmental manufacturing performance. Using a comprehensive blend of the literature, eight performance measures of GM and their 59 variables have been developed. The identified performance measures were subjected to appropriate statistical tests to establish reliability and validity. The validated instrument developed here may be used by manufacturing organisations to prioritise their efforts to assess and implement GM.

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