Business sustainability methodology for European manufacturing SMEs
Date
2011-06-28Author
Dimache, Aurora
Mitchell, Sinéad
O'Dowd, Paul
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Dimache, Aurora, Mitchell, Sinéad, & O'Dowd, Paul. (2011). Business sustainability methodology for European manufacturing SMEs. Paper presented at the 1st International Conference on Sustainable Intelligent Manufacturing, Leiria, Portugal, 28 June - 01 July.
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Abstract
SMEs find it difficult to deal with environmental issues due mainly to their limited resources in terms
of money, people and time. Our research also identified other barriers to engaging SMEs in environmental
improvement activities, such as lack of awareness of their impact on the environment, belief that any measure
regarding improvement of environmental performance means higher cost and insufficient access to
environmental information, tools, training, information on available funding and incentives. In response, the
FutureSME team has developed the Business Sustainability framework which is intended to support
manufacturing SMEs in four key areas: cutting costs, gaining a competitive advantage, being compliant with
legislation and finding new business opportunities, whilst improving their environmental performance. The
framework includes an environmental toolkit, which comprises an environmental training programme and a set
of environmental tools. This paper describes the Business Sustainability framework for SMEs.