Final Report Summary - SO SMART (Socially sustainable manufacturing for the Factories of the Future – SO SMART)
Executive Summary:
The SO SMART project has been an 18 month coordination and support action aimed at Social Sustainability in future European manufacturing industry. SO SMART has identified and suggested challenges, means, and actions related to improvement of social sustainability. Industrial and academic partners, having expert backgrounds in business management; production; human factors; corporate culture; and industrial automation, carried out the project. Results were discussed with external experts, having educational, financial and economic backgrounds, to ensure practical relevance. The project continually involved identified beneficiaries of the project in an online and offline discussion about social sustainability. The audiences included industrial and academic stakeholders as well as a wider audience consisting of university students, sustainability organizations, and the broad public.
Europe must find ways to (re-)employ major parts of its population in industry, so that these people are socially safeguarded (e.g. in their standard of living, affordable housing, and adequate pension). European manufacturing is currently facing a number of challenges. They are not only linked to demographic change but also to renewal of technologies and pressure to find new forms of organization that can adapt to future challenges. Research has indicated that, alongside an aging working population, Europe must tackle issues of skill gaps that threaten the staffing of future manufacturing. Even before the project had begun, the consortium was invited to publish and present papers at conferences. Thus, we could underline the importance of the question of socially sustainable manufacturing.
From the project’s start, the SO SMART consortium decided to examine social sustainability using a "socially sustainable ecosystem" framework that included the perspectives of the individual worker, the industrial company and the surrounding society. The group concluded that the concerns of all the three ecosystem perspectives must be balanced, in order for future factories to thrive in and contribute to their societal environment.
The project could be described as a journey. If so, the trajectory started from an idea that improving the well-being and performance of human workers in manufacturing must be achievable without sacrificing company success. The journey then moved to a clear vision for future socially sustainable factories and concrete knowledge of the road ahead. To support a journey for the European industry, the SO SMART project partners are pleased to contribute a [*]roadmap[/*] for research and education. We are also suggesting ’vehicles’, in the form of know-how, definitions, lecture and report packages, pilot scenarios, and measurement methods targeting corporate culture and economic success.
Project Context and Objectives:
The overall objectives of the “Socially sustainable manufacturing for the Factories of the Future” – SO SMART were described as follows:
• Develop a socially sustainable ecosystem assessment framework, including guidelines to describe scenarios and a set of indicators needed in order to evaluate them, under the perspectives of economic and social sustainability.
• Define and validate a future vision for socially sustainable FoFs, and a number of future ecosystem scenarios in which industrial strategies drive interactions with human workers and society at large.
• Develop recommendations for companies and beneficiary groups on how to apply these scenarios and from the analysis of the gaps between “AS IS” and “TO BE” pilot scenarios, build-up a future research roadmap.
SO SMART will create support actions aiming to ensure social well-being of the employees in the Factories of the Future. SO SMART will provide a set of guidelines and perspectives to address new forms of interaction between process, machinery and human beings in new kind of socially, economically and environmentally sustainable workplaces. By following the guidelines SO SMART will outline why and how the Factories of the Future can operate profitably while at the same time providing a stimulating environment for the employees. SO SMART emphasizes life-long learning and self-improvement of employees through stimulation and motivation for job satisfaction. In Factories of the Future, the social capital is seen as a valuable asset and thus SO SMART will provide tangible results for capturing and utilizing this knowledge for sustainable business in Europe. The SO SMART concept combines the individual, industrial and societal perspectives of manufacturing, in order to ensure that all the different interactions and interrelations are captured in one picture, namely the SO SMART ecosystem. SO SMART introduces a new concept for corporate culture for the Factories of Future that thrives through the social capital, well-being of people and new motivating and stimulating management methods.
Project Results:
The description of the main results is structured into the project work pachage and deliverables structure.
Deleiverable 1.1 Report on practices for socially sustainable corporate culture
The notion of social sustainability has been developed aiming at global growth. Policy makers have elaborated on this concept at regional and country level. Institutions and associations representing the scientific and technological environment have proposed their visions. Enterprises have adopted Corporate Social Responsibility practices. In this context, the role of manufacturing may have appeared so far limited to the specific aspects related to the workplaces. However, a broader perspective can lead to an extended awareness on how manufacturing can contribute to the social sustainability.
In this document an analysis of the state-of-the-art in social sustainability will be performed to identify the definition of social sustainability in manufacturing, corporate culture, business approaches, management strategies, and organizational models.
In order to gather a picture of the current practices of social sustainability used in manufacturing, we performed explorative studies using surveys to companies, interviews to other stakeholders and online researches.
The report highlights wide recognition of the relevance of the economic, environmental and social dimensions of sustainability, with the emphasis on social aspects decreasing as the topics appear less closely connected to the business.
Employees, customers and supply chain are the main target of social sustainability practices, well integrated in the companies’ systems and processes, regularly monitored through KPIs and reported.
Social sustainability culture appears quite well grounded in manufacturing companies, however some weakness may be detected in reactive rather than proactive attitudes, and low compliance controls with social sustainability strategy.
Interesting areas not fully investigated under the perspective of social sustainability are related to initiatives to create and sustain virtuous behaviour by involving and taking advantage of several actors in the factories’ ecosystems and to practices to anticipate and address crisis management.
D1.2 Report on key indicators of social sustainability
Manufacturing, defined as the transformation of materials and information into goods for the satisfaction of human needs, is one of the primary wealth-generating activities for any nation and contributes significantly to employment (Chryssolouris, 2006). Furthermore, in the past decades, institutions in general have been increasingly interested and involved in defining sustainability and social responsibility. In addition, social and political pressures have led to the creation of new regulations and policies that support new business opportunities around global sustainability (Lanz et al., 2014). Taking these into account, the primary objective of the SO SMART Deliverable D1.2 “Report on key indicators of social sustainability” is to provide a comprehensive set of indicators and main dimensions, which will be exploited within the context of the SO SMART project, in order to approach and investigate the concept of social sustainability for the factories of the future.
Within this context, this document (D1.2) provides a comprehensive, long-list of indicators related to manufacturing which will be further examined for their relation with social and economic sustainability. This long-list of indicators is included in the current document; additionally, for complementarity purposes, the link to an online sheet with the most updated version of the list is also provided, in case further enhancements are made to this list during the later stages of the project.
Furthermore, this long-list also provided directions towards selecting eleven (11) main dimensions of social sustainability. The dimensions aim to describe the space of social sustainability, while the indicators aim to make this more comprehensible. In general, it is expected that the indicators may be used to investigate which dimensions are met in terms of social sustainability. These main dimensions are expected to be further studied and be refined in the next phases of the project and to drive –together with additional available results- the future developments of SO SMART.
Identified relations of specific indicators from the provided long-list with the main dimensions of social sustainability have also been indicated. In order to conclude the examination of these dimensions and to indicate their measurability, a preliminary approach on how to evaluate these dimensions in terms of efficient social sustainability practice has also been reported. Furthermore, the beneficiary groups of social sustainability, which are expected to be further studied within the context of SO SMART, are identified and defined in this document. These beneficiary groups have been selected by considering clarity and smooth assimilation, while indicative relations with social sustainability indicators have also been established.
Concluding, it is noted that the current work has already been exploited in Task 1.3 where – among others- effort has been given to provide a more detailed analysis of the relations between the indicators and metrics specified in the current document. Further to this examination and its results, it is accordingly expected that the information provided in the current document may also be efficiently exploited to the next stages of the project as well.
D1.3 Assessment framework for current practices and future scenarios
The goal of this task is twofold: a) to create a reference to evaluate sustainability performances, in which current practices can be used as a baseline and desirable targets can be set; and b) to identify the main drivers that impact on social and economic sustainability. Qualitative methods will be used, enhanced by multivariate analysis (e.g. correlations, regressions, explorative factor analyses) based on available quantitative data. This addresses the need to increase the shared understanding of what social sustainability means and how it should be evaluated. The deliverable answer how to identify social sustainability and how to estimate its impact to economic performance (which scope, KPIs, dimensions etc. are relevant), and how to identify sustainable culture and its impact on economic performance (culture dimensions, attractors, success-related driving forces, etc.)
The main outcome of this task is an assessment framework that includes selected Social sustainability dimensions associated to Performance Indicators. The assessment framework’s calculus includes a set of indicators (201) and identified relationships. These relationships show what social sustainability and corporate culture indicators are linked to the actual measurable performance indicators.
The Gap Analysis of the work done showed that there is a lot of different analysis available yet advisedly or unknowingly, with inadequate information to handle a complete socio- technical system. This means, that the viewpoint to assess social sustainability has been constrained to softer indicators without linkage to the actual work performance, quality and complexity.
D1.4 The SO SMART case for the socially sustainable ecosystem
The deliverable 1.4 describes three “AS-IS” scenarios where an ecosystem including the interactions of the individual, the company, and the society perspective are pictured. The scenarios’ theoretical basis is a literature review, a company survey focusing on social sustainability practices, and research covering important KPIs in social sustainability practices. The report provides narratives focusing on the relationship between a persona and a company. The personas are used to communicate narratively about stakeholder needs and wants in relation to what the company and society have to offer.
The three scenarios are based on a subset of a literature review including research papers and articles, exploring various stakeholder needs, wants and priorities.
The scenarios are built up in the following structure:
• Name, age, education; objective description of the persona and the setting
• The individual’s perspective on the situation
• The industry’s perspective on the situation
• The societal perspective on the situation
Finally, the report maps the level to which previously proposed dimensions of Social Sustainability (taken from Task 1.3 of the SO SMART project) are represented in the scenarios. The aim is to use the scenarios here as a starting point for forthcoming work in WP 3 and WP 4 of SO SMART.
D2.1 Report on social sustainability factors targeting the economic profit
Manufacturing, defined as the transformation of materials and information into goods for the satisfaction of human needs, is one of the primary wealth-generating activities for any nation and contributes significantly to employment (Chryssolouris, 2006). A question that has arisen, is how social sustainability can be related to the economic profitability of manufacturing enterprises. The investigation of this query is expected to enable us picture a generic model for economically profitable factories through social sustainability.
Taking these into account, the primary objective of the SO SMART Deliverable D2.1 “Report on social sustainability factors targeting the economic profit” is to identify the social sustainability factors and key performance indicators (KPIs) which could potentially be related to the economic profit of such a model. The second objective of this work is to examine and eventually identify the expected impact, interrelations and dependencies of the identified factors. The identified factors together with the resolved interrelations and interdependencies will be considered in the course of the project towards the implementation of a model for economically profitable factories through social sustainability.
In order to accomplish the aforementioned objectives, firstly a set of frequently used factors related to social sustainability is presented. Each of these factors is then analysed into several sets of indicators for these social sustainability factors. Secondly, in a similar context, a set of frequently employed economic profitability factors is presented and then the according economic profitability indicators are indicated. In all cases, all factors and indicators are also accompanied by widely used definitions gathered from various sources.
After the initial collection of potentially inter-related social sustainability factors and economic profitability indicators, selected sets of expected interrelations are presented. For example, in some cases security as a social sustainability factor is related with monetary gains while in another case the educational level, as a social sustainability factor is associated with the efficiency and growth of a manufacturing company. It is considered that the presented, expected interrelations and dependencies between social sustainability factors and economic profitability indicators is one of the first approaches aiming to gradually identify in more concrete way, these established interrelations.
Furthermore, the exploitation of these identified interrelations and assessments is discussed in the conclusions, providing the directions for the next task and especially for Task 2.2 “Model for economically profitable factories through social sustainability.
D2.2 Model for economically profitable factories through social sustainability
The clear aim of Work package 2 is to describe a “New model for economically profitable factories through social sustainability”. The deliverable document’s objective is to describe a new model where social sustainability is a core approach for achieving economic profitability in companies while balancing industrial, societal and individual requirements, as well as being key for long-term sustainable development. This model is a continuation of the findings of SO SMART Deliverable D2.1 Report on social sustainability factors targeting the economic profit, which provided a set of social sustainability factors that are potentially related with economic profitability of a manufacturing enterprise. The model described here breaks down economic and socially sustainable factors into related indicators and qualitatively indicates their mutual interactions. The findings provided in the current deliverable may also be used as an input in D3.1 “Report on corporate culture factors for stimulating environment” and other tasks that run in parallel or during the later phases of the SO SMART project.
The second objective of this work is to present a practical application of the provided model by introducing the Teaching Factory concept which can support the implementation of a model for economically profitable factories through social sustainability.
D3.1 Report on corporate culture factors for stimulating environment
The main task of D3.1 is to determine the correlation between corporate social sustainability culture and corporate success with the help of surveys and multivariate analyses.
As a result of all aspects of interaction between the economy, ecology and social circumstances, sustainability has become a major economic factor. For successful manufacturing in the future the implementation of strategies for sustainability in the company is of considerable importance, not only as the right response with respect to the global challenges, but also with respect to the opportunities that sustainability management offers to the company. Therefore, sustainability is recognized as a success-related factor of corporate management attitudes.
In spite of this considerable knowledge, a practice of sustainability management has not yet been implemented that is in accordance with the necessity of recognizing sustainability as a fundamental approach for dealing with the global challenges of the future and political willingness.
In order to make sustainability management of significant relevance for the management, the impact of implemented sustainability on companies’ performances needs to be explained. The aspects of the effectiveness of sustainability management are analysed in connection with the work of SO SMART, placing the focus on social sustainability, rather than on the basis of ecological, technical or financial measures. Social sustainability has in turn been identified as a measurable characteristic of the attitude and conduct within the corporate culture. Moreover, significant differences could be worked out in the corporate culture that differentiates financially successful companies from those that are not based on measured cultural profiles. Multivariate analytical methods have been applied in order to justify a successful correlation between corporate social sustainability culture and company success. The findings of the study are undergoing further development in the following work packages to recommend actions for social sustainability management.
The evaluation to be reported here pertains to the following gathered data: Panel data of 15 European member countries (n = 971 after rectification) and data of eight German companies (n = 207 after rectification). Both sets of data contain results of a questionnaire as well as data concerning the success of the company. For the panel survey, these success data are questionnaire items too. For the eight companies, objective success indicators such as EBIT and other parameters have been surveyed. Therefore, company success data of the panel data and the specific companies’ data are not directly comparable and are evaluated separately.
Based on content and item analysis, four independent variables were established:
• “Sustainability strategy and leadership”
• “Mission, communication and learning”
• “Social care and work life”
• “Loyalty and identification”
Furthermore, one dependent variable “company success” was created in a scaled as well as in a dichotomized version. For the panel data, the dichotomized version was created by contrasting the lowest 25 per cent (C25 and lower) with the highest 25 per cent (C75 and higher). For the specific companies’ data, the scaled and dichotomized variables were
created by ratings based on the objective parameters of each company.
There were high correlations especially between the independent variables (factors) “Sustainability strategy and leadership” and “Mission, communication and learning”, even though they were based on different factors. Because these dependencies led to a high co- linearity, the multiple regressions of company success on the independent variables were performed with one or the other one of these variables.
In the multiple regression analyses, “Sustainability strategy and leadership” is highly (and positively) related to company success, and “Mission, communication and learning” is highly related to company success as well. This suggests that a systematically performed corporate sustainability strategy leadership – which goes along with openness, responsibility, participation of employees, and mutual trust and respect, and emphasis on learning and communication – is positively related to corporate success.
In contrast, aspects of social care, such as reward systems, equal rights, care and provision of the company, are only related to company success as far as these aspects coincide with a sustainability strategy leadership. (In fact, these aspects should follow from a sustainability strategy leadership). But when reward systems, equal rights, care and provision appear but are not related to a sustainability strategy leadership, they do not positively correspond to company success. Therefore, these aspects of employee orientation only have an effect on success if they are anchored within a sustainability strategy leadership.
“Loyalty and identification” of the employees with their company is a significant (and positive) predictor of company success in the panel data too. In contrast, in the specific companies’ data, the relationship is significant but negative. This might hint about cultural peculiarities in Germany; specifically “Loyalty and identification” seems not to have a positive impact on company success if detached from a sustainability strategy leadership of the company. (For example “too much” harmony might have a positive impact on loyalty but not on corporate performance.) Methodologically, the negative relation of “Loyalty and identification” and company success seems to be due to a suppressor effect.
The results reported so far were basically the same when a discriminant analysis with the dichotomized company success variable was performed. In case of the panel data, the discriminant function yielded 83,5% correct classifications; for the specific companies data, this function yielded 70,9% correct classifications.
An additional regression analysis with single items led to similar results. Significant items emphasized strategy, positive development, and social aspects in the relationships with the employees.
To conclude, corporate success goes along with a sustainability strategy that is strategically planned and performed by leadership, and that is expressed by an emphasis on learning, open communication, responsibility, participation, trust, and respect. This positive strategy might result in enhanced “Loyalty and identification” of employees as well as in justice in rewards, equal rights, care and provision. On the other hand, justice in rewards, equal rights, care and provision do not relate to company success if carried out in isolation without a link to sustainability. Similarly, “Loyalty and identification” of employees contribute to enhancing corporate success especially if based on a sustainability strategy leadership.
Inventory of good examples for stimulating workplaces
in partner organizations
The aim of Work package 3 is to Describe and support a “New vision for the stimulating environment in the Factories of the Future”. The purpose of deliverable D3.2 and the inventory is to provide empirical examples of social sustainability-oriented projects, actions and implementations at companies that demonstrate the positive effects (regarding economy, efficiency, innovation) that arise from interventions with a social sustainability angle, simultaneously showcasing stimulating workplaces as an enabler of social sustainability. The examples reported here are reported cases observed in industry, and are not influenced by the SO SMART project. Examples include companies from various countries such as SKF, BMW, Luxottica and Bitwise. Each of these examples have been connected to the 11 dimensions of social sustainability defined in WP1, and the goal in each case description has been to indicate positive effects that arise from interventions with a social sustainability angle.
In conclusion, there are many examples of successful interventions that support social sustainability in European Manufacturing – this deliverable has showcased some of these, further examples can be found in the online inventory.
D3.3 Report and lecture package describing the new vision
The following report describes the plan for a Report and Lecture package intended to convey how to implement the SO SMART vision for stimulating workplaces in Europe’s Factories of the Future. This vision is derived from previous work and results within the SO SMART project (to date).
The lecture package is intended as a modular quick introduction for the public as well as for academic and industrial partners and covers the following basic elements:
• An orientation in definitions of Social Sustainability, to acquaint the audience with the width of understandings and which definition best captures the challenges faced by future European Manufacturing industry. This module includes a run-through of upcoming social sustainability challenges.
• The “SO SMART ecosystem” multi-layer approach taking into account the perspectives of (1) the individual worker or prospective worker, (2) the industrial company, (3) the society/community and (4) the “landscape”, or national/international policy.
• A definition of “stimulating workplaces” that conveys the necessity of trying to achieve them in order to solve upcoming social sustainability challenges.
• The elicited needs of future industry, as expressed primarily in Workshops and earlier Work packages.
• The 11 dimensions of Social Sustainability for future factories as identified by the project, and which of them should be particularly addressed to achieve a socially sustainable corporate culture that leads to corporate success (pending the statistical treatment described in the results of D3.1)
• An overview of the results of SO SMART’s studies of European Corporate Practices, Financial indicators and Social sustainability initiatives and good examples of Tier 2 company implementations.
• The road map indicating a feasible way from the as-is challenges of today to a new vision for stimulating work environments in socially sustainable factories, where the main social sustainability challenges are met.
As many components of the SO SMART lecture and report package were still undergoing development at the time Deliverable 3.2 was reported, this report is to be regarded as a plan formed on the basis of the results to date.
Potential Impact:
POTENTIAL IMPACT
As a summary of all project results, the SO SMART CSA has suggested and described pilot scenarios for strengthening corporate culture factors that support financial success. Some pilot scenarios are detailed, including a Transfer Project that proposes how the main results of SO SMART could be rapidly implemented in European industry. If publically supported, a transfer project could enhance the transition to European social sustainability in manufacturing, especially in SMEs.
The potential socio-economic impact is potentially large, given that this, only 18-month, CSA has been able to produce a theoretical as well as empirical base for Socially Sustainability in the future European workplaces. The broad data from around 1000 respondents gives a clear indication that this is a valid and interesting field for the European commission to fund and enlarge. Provided a difficult demographic future of Europe it is vital for industry and society to prepare for times when the European citizens are too old to work. Social sustainability in manufacturing is necessary to retain skilled workers after pension and to attract young people.
During its entire duration, the project was to a great extent carried out in public, with frequent public appearances at scientific, industrial and popular science events as well as through the organization of recurring workshops where the interaction with participants was key to get input. It explicitly sought the advice of external experts in the fields of economics, finances and education. There was also an online discussion forum to keep the discussion going in between events. The consortium also collaborated closely with a group of experts from different domains, who were able to give inputs to the project.
The project could be described as a journey. If so, the trajectory started from an idea that improving the well-being and performance of human workers in manufacturing must be achievable without sacrificing company success. The journey then moved to a clear vision for future socially sustainable factories and concrete knowledge of the road ahead. To support a journey for the European industry, the SO SMART project partners are pleased to contribute a roadmap for research and education. We are also suggesting ’vehicles’, in the form of know-how, definitions, lecture and report packages, pilot scenarios, and measurement methods targeting corporate culture and economic success
MAIN DISSEMINATION ACTIVITIES AND EXPLOITATION OF RESULTS
D3.3 Report and lecture package describing the new vision
The following report describes the plan for a Report and Lecture package intended to convey how to implement the SO SMART vision for stimulating workplaces in Europe’s Factories of the Future. This vision is derived from previous work and results within the SO SMART project (to date).
The lecture package is intended as a modular quick introduction for the public as well as for academic and industrial partners and covers the following basic elements:
• An orientation in definitions of Social Sustainability, to acquaint the audience with the width of understandings and which definition best captures the challenges faced by future European Manufacturing industry. This module includes a run-through of upcoming social sustainability challenges.
• The “SO SMART ecosystem” multi-layer approach taking into account the perspectives of (1) the individual worker or prospective worker, (2) the industrial company, (3) the society/community and (4) the “landscape”, or national/international policy.
• A definition of “stimulating workplaces” that conveys the necessity of trying to achieve them in order to solve upcoming social sustainability challenges.
• The elicited needs of future industry, as expressed primarily in Workshops and earlier Work packages.
• The 11 dimensions of Social Sustainability for future factories as identified by the project, and which of them should be particularly addressed to achieve a socially sustainable corporate culture that leads to corporate success (pending the statistical treatment described in the results of D3.1)
• An overview of the results of SO SMART’s studies of European Corporate Practices, Financial indicators and Social sustainability initiatives and good examples of Tier 2 company implementations.
• The road map indicating a feasible way from the as-is challenges of today to a new vision for stimulating work environments in socially sustainable factories, where the main social sustainability challenges are met.
As many components of the SO SMART lecture and report package were still undergoing development at the time Deliverable 3.2 was reported, this report is to be regarded as a plan formed on the basis of the results to date, but final reports and lectures take further influence from the subsequent work done in WP4 and WP5.
D4.1 Recommendations on social sustainability and corporate culture
D4.1 explains the empirical findings as practical recommendations for transferring the knowledge to companies. The empirical analyses of D3.1 identified four social sustainability dimensions as success-related driving forces. More than 40 percent of a company’s success can be explained by the impacts of the four social sustainability dimensions.
The dimensions of a culture of social sustainability are explained with regard to their significance for the practical application of the findings.
The dimension ‘Sustainability Strategy and Leadership’ is shown as the connection of social sustainability with the corporate strategy, as an inspired and innovative orientation, process- controlled implemented with continuous improvement, a quality of governance (leadership) that illustrates social competence.
The dimension ‘Mission, Communication and Learning’ fosters employee development within the social sustainability approach. The advice for this dimension is to communicate a clear mission statement of social sustainability, which represents an attractive offer for a personal commitment from the employee and supports an attitude that recognizes social sustainability as relevant, and understands 'Learning' as an opportunity for advancing the development of each and every individual.
The dimension ‘Social Care and Work-life’ emphasizes social aspects within the company, which can be perceived under work-life balance and reward systems of the company. This dimension is found to relate to corporate success only to the extent that it results from a sustainability strategy.
The dimension ‘Loyalty and Identification’ concerns the employees’ perspective regarding their employer. This includes loyalty and identification with the company, which can also be expressed simultaneously by job involvement.
According to the findings of two SO SMART workshops, an EU transfer project of social sustainability is proposed. This project, entitled 'Social sustainability and benchmarking', is meant to substantiate the findings of SO SMART, establish them by practical work and prepare them for implementation in European corporate practice.
D4.2 Research and education roadmap
This deliverable describes the SO SMART Vision for a future: “Socially Sustainable and Successful Manufacturing Ecosystem: Good For Industry, Society And Individuals”.
Then, the Roadmap for Research and Education, developed drawing on the analysis of the gaps between the SO SMART Vision and the current status, is presented. It is composed by thee main sets of recommendations:
First, 11 Research Areas, in which further action is recommended, are detailed.
These are:
• Sustaining people in the system
• Closing the skills gap
• Ageing workforce
• Socially sustainable product life-cycle
• Culture, strategy, business model innovation
Second, 6 Recommendations for Education are outlined. These are:
• Tailoring interventions to enable individuals to develop throughout their life
• Strengthening relationships with industry
• Improving learning outcomes
• Developing reflective industrial societies
• Exploiting innovative technologies
• Sustaining educators’ professional development
Third,7 Recommendations for Policy Makers and stakeholders are reported. These are:
• Improving company engagement in socially sustainable manufacturing and spreading good practices
• Integrating socially sustainable manufacturing concepts, models and approaches into research, education and training
• Supporting companies in promoting a positive image of manufacturing and track levels of attractiveness especially among young people
• Evaluating the endorsement of common accounting standards for company disclosure of social sustainability related information and performance, and improving reporting
• Evaluating the development of a EU voluntary label promoting social sustainability excellence in the life-cycle
• Better aligning European and global approaches to social sustainability in manufacturing, while maintaining sensitivity to regional and local issues
• Balancing innovation and regulation for new types of business and technology
Finally, the Roadmap for Socially Sustainable Factories focuses on the company level and presents a six-step approach that manufacturers can adopt to address challenges of today, to become socially sustainable factories. It also shows the models, recommendations and tools developed by SO SMART to help manufacturers to progress on this journey.
D4.3 Report on Pilot scenarios for social sustainability
and corporate culture
The conventional observation of the business world might be intuitively tempted to see a contradiction between economic success and social sustainability. Any company employee is always linked to the company internally as an employee, but is also a member of the society in which the company is operating. Both aspects have to be treated differently when it comes to describing social sustainability. In this project we decided to firstly focus on the question of how to describe and possibly improve the internal situation of social sustainability.
Based on the work in this project we report that social sustainability and economic success do not have to be contradictions. On the contrary, by carrying out a survey within companies and conducting a European-wide poll we found that a socially sustainable situation for the employees is linked to economic success in such a way that a company striving for social sustainability will be economically more successful than one that does not do it.
In this report we connect this result with two important facts:
Already today it is possible to find enterprises that are living examples of the claim we make. Beyond that, our results can be used in a methodological way in order to improve and understand a given situation of any enterprise in the space of social sustainability.
D5.1 Community Building Plan
This deliverable presents on-going and upcoming (to date) activities within the SO SMART CSA for community building. The deliverable reports on timelines for activities and purposes and intentions for the community, both in terms of what the consortium will request of active community partners, and what the SO SMART CSA will deliver to them.
The main activities for establishing, building and maintaining a community are manifested in the form of planned workshops at different conference events and in the form of online forums for:
• sharing knowledge of SO SMART road-mapping results as they emerge,
• disseminating invitations to upcoming events, and
• discussing social sustainability challenges of future manufacturing.
The deliverable also suggests ways to track the progress of the community building.
D5.2 Workshops and forums regarding the SO-SMART ecosystem model
The purpose of this deliverable is to briefly describe the activities carried out by the SO SMART Consortium in order to create awareness about the project; to promote the involvement of the European stakeholders and policy makers in the development of the SO SMART Ecosystem Model; to disseminate the project's results in the European industrial and global scientific communities. Under TAMPERE’s coordination, the partners will disseminate the results of the project with publications in journals, presentations at scientific conferences and will also organize a number of workshops. A project portal will be developed (in synchronization with WP6) and be used as the central information system for all project-related information and activities. It will consist of a private and a public section. The private section will be restricted to consortium members and used for internal data storage and exchange as well as work. The public part will be published and widely advertised. Furthermore, preparation of press releases and other dissemination material, such as a logo, templates with a common SO-SMART graphical profile, a standard PPT presentation, leaflet, poster and newsletters, etc., will be the main focus for this task.
The tangible outputs are:
• Workshops involving stakeholders and experts to debate current practices and future scenarios for social and economic sustainable manufacturing from an eco-systemic perspective;
• Academic publications in journals, presentations in scientific conferences and at least two workshops: 1) at ManuFuture conference 2013 with consortia, Tier 1 and Tier 2 partners; and 2) at NMP Industrial technologies conference in 2014, openly for identified stakeholders.
• A project portal will be developed and used as the central information system for all project- related information and activities. It will consist of a private and a public section.
• General audience and industrially focused press releases and other dissemination material.
D5.3 Online inventory of Social Sustainability interest groups
and extended networks
This deliverable describes an online inventory initiated within SO SMART to provide an overview of organizations, initiatives, interest groups and similar entities that discuss social sustainability, work environment and employability issues. The purpose of this inventory is twofold; a) to better understand what initiatives and practice are already in place, b) to simultaneously act as a basis for dissemination across different countries.
At the time that this report is written, the growing online inventory contains 45 different organizations/initiatives that have been identified by project partners to connect with 1 or more of 3 main focus characteristics. The minimum requirement for being included in the inventory was connectedness to the topic of social sustainability. Yet whilst all the collected organizations and initiatives claim to be working with this sector, less than 15% were given a high ranking, in terms of social sustainability emphasis level. Which indicates that this concept is still limited in industrial understanding and application.
The Online inventory is a working document, which will continue to be updated throughout the SO SMART projects when new interest groups are identified. The inventory will also be disseminated publicly on the project website www.sosmarteu.eu.
D5.4 Online forum for exchange of ideas and input for Social Sustainability interest groups and extended networks
It is essential for the SO SMART project’s impact to provide grounds for the extended networks of engaged manufacturing community members participating in and contributing to our workshops and related events to re-connect with each other, learn more about social sustainability and partake of the generated results and content. The online forum is an important platform for making the results from the project’s activities visible as they are generated, and also for the consortium members to stay in touch with the community. Another function is to provide them a platform of sharing what they know, thus adding to the collective understanding of Social Sustainability.
The result is an online community facilitated by social media to spread public results and engage past and present participants in further discussions on how to move Social Sustainability forwards.
D6.1 SO SMART Web Portal
The SO SMART public website was created in the platform CPS3.4 and published on March, 6 2013 and has been used to communicate information about the project to the public. It brings together file- and link sharing platforms with project news and a channel for public interaction.
The internal project website used the platform Basecamp.com to coordinate the activities, communication and file sharing internally. This site was created September 1, 2013.
This formal deliverable was delayed to an internal administrative misunderstanding. The internal and external Web portals have been operational in accordance with the dates above.
D3.3 Report and lecture package describing the new vision
The following report describes the plan for a Report and Lecture package intended to convey how to implement the SO SMART vision for stimulating workplaces in Europe’s Factories of the Future. This vision is derived from previous work and results within the SO SMART project (to date).
The lecture package is intended as a modular quick introduction for the public as well as for academic and industrial partners and covers the following basic elements:
• An orientation in definitions of Social Sustainability, to acquaint the audience with the width of understandings and which definition best captures the challenges faced by future European Manufacturing industry. This module includes a run-through of upcoming social sustainability challenges.
• The “SO SMART ecosystem” multi-layer approach taking into account the perspectives of (1) the individual worker or prospective worker, (2) the industrial company, (3) the society/community and (4) the “landscape”, or national/international policy.
• A definition of “stimulating workplaces” that conveys the necessity of trying to achieve them in order to solve upcoming social sustainability challenges.
• The elicited needs of future industry, as expressed primarily in Workshops and earlier Work packages.
• The 11 dimensions of Social Sustainability for future factories as identified by the project, and which of them should be particularly addressed to achieve a socially sustainable corporate culture that leads to corporate success (pending the statistical treatment described in the results of D3.1)
• An overview of the results of SO SMART’s studies of European Corporate Practices, Financial indicators and Social sustainability initiatives and good examples of Tier 2 company implementations.
• The road map indicating a feasible way from the as-is challenges of today to a new vision for stimulating work environments in socially sustainable factories, where the main social sustainability challenges are met.
As many components of the SO SMART lecture and report package were still undergoing development at the time Deliverable 3.2 was reported, this report is to be regarded as a plan formed on the basis of the results to date, but final reports and lectures take further influence from the subsequent work done in WP4 and WP5.
List of Websites:
Public web site
TEDx SO SMART presenttion on demographis problems
Main contact:
Professor Johan Stahre
Chair of Production Systems
Head of Division of Production Systems
Dept. of Product and Production Development
Chalmers University of Technology
SE-412 96 Göteborg, SWEDEN
Visiting adress: Hörsalsvägen 7A
Tel: +46 703 088 838 Fax: +46 31 772 3660
Email: Johan.Stahre@Chalmers.se
The SO SMART project has been an 18 month coordination and support action aimed at Social Sustainability in future European manufacturing industry. SO SMART has identified and suggested challenges, means, and actions related to improvement of social sustainability. Industrial and academic partners, having expert backgrounds in business management; production; human factors; corporate culture; and industrial automation, carried out the project. Results were discussed with external experts, having educational, financial and economic backgrounds, to ensure practical relevance. The project continually involved identified beneficiaries of the project in an online and offline discussion about social sustainability. The audiences included industrial and academic stakeholders as well as a wider audience consisting of university students, sustainability organizations, and the broad public.
Europe must find ways to (re-)employ major parts of its population in industry, so that these people are socially safeguarded (e.g. in their standard of living, affordable housing, and adequate pension). European manufacturing is currently facing a number of challenges. They are not only linked to demographic change but also to renewal of technologies and pressure to find new forms of organization that can adapt to future challenges. Research has indicated that, alongside an aging working population, Europe must tackle issues of skill gaps that threaten the staffing of future manufacturing. Even before the project had begun, the consortium was invited to publish and present papers at conferences. Thus, we could underline the importance of the question of socially sustainable manufacturing.
From the project’s start, the SO SMART consortium decided to examine social sustainability using a "socially sustainable ecosystem" framework that included the perspectives of the individual worker, the industrial company and the surrounding society. The group concluded that the concerns of all the three ecosystem perspectives must be balanced, in order for future factories to thrive in and contribute to their societal environment.
The project could be described as a journey. If so, the trajectory started from an idea that improving the well-being and performance of human workers in manufacturing must be achievable without sacrificing company success. The journey then moved to a clear vision for future socially sustainable factories and concrete knowledge of the road ahead. To support a journey for the European industry, the SO SMART project partners are pleased to contribute a [*]roadmap[/*] for research and education. We are also suggesting ’vehicles’, in the form of know-how, definitions, lecture and report packages, pilot scenarios, and measurement methods targeting corporate culture and economic success.
Project Context and Objectives:
The overall objectives of the “Socially sustainable manufacturing for the Factories of the Future” – SO SMART were described as follows:
• Develop a socially sustainable ecosystem assessment framework, including guidelines to describe scenarios and a set of indicators needed in order to evaluate them, under the perspectives of economic and social sustainability.
• Define and validate a future vision for socially sustainable FoFs, and a number of future ecosystem scenarios in which industrial strategies drive interactions with human workers and society at large.
• Develop recommendations for companies and beneficiary groups on how to apply these scenarios and from the analysis of the gaps between “AS IS” and “TO BE” pilot scenarios, build-up a future research roadmap.
SO SMART will create support actions aiming to ensure social well-being of the employees in the Factories of the Future. SO SMART will provide a set of guidelines and perspectives to address new forms of interaction between process, machinery and human beings in new kind of socially, economically and environmentally sustainable workplaces. By following the guidelines SO SMART will outline why and how the Factories of the Future can operate profitably while at the same time providing a stimulating environment for the employees. SO SMART emphasizes life-long learning and self-improvement of employees through stimulation and motivation for job satisfaction. In Factories of the Future, the social capital is seen as a valuable asset and thus SO SMART will provide tangible results for capturing and utilizing this knowledge for sustainable business in Europe. The SO SMART concept combines the individual, industrial and societal perspectives of manufacturing, in order to ensure that all the different interactions and interrelations are captured in one picture, namely the SO SMART ecosystem. SO SMART introduces a new concept for corporate culture for the Factories of Future that thrives through the social capital, well-being of people and new motivating and stimulating management methods.
Project Results:
The description of the main results is structured into the project work pachage and deliverables structure.
Deleiverable 1.1 Report on practices for socially sustainable corporate culture
The notion of social sustainability has been developed aiming at global growth. Policy makers have elaborated on this concept at regional and country level. Institutions and associations representing the scientific and technological environment have proposed their visions. Enterprises have adopted Corporate Social Responsibility practices. In this context, the role of manufacturing may have appeared so far limited to the specific aspects related to the workplaces. However, a broader perspective can lead to an extended awareness on how manufacturing can contribute to the social sustainability.
In this document an analysis of the state-of-the-art in social sustainability will be performed to identify the definition of social sustainability in manufacturing, corporate culture, business approaches, management strategies, and organizational models.
In order to gather a picture of the current practices of social sustainability used in manufacturing, we performed explorative studies using surveys to companies, interviews to other stakeholders and online researches.
The report highlights wide recognition of the relevance of the economic, environmental and social dimensions of sustainability, with the emphasis on social aspects decreasing as the topics appear less closely connected to the business.
Employees, customers and supply chain are the main target of social sustainability practices, well integrated in the companies’ systems and processes, regularly monitored through KPIs and reported.
Social sustainability culture appears quite well grounded in manufacturing companies, however some weakness may be detected in reactive rather than proactive attitudes, and low compliance controls with social sustainability strategy.
Interesting areas not fully investigated under the perspective of social sustainability are related to initiatives to create and sustain virtuous behaviour by involving and taking advantage of several actors in the factories’ ecosystems and to practices to anticipate and address crisis management.
D1.2 Report on key indicators of social sustainability
Manufacturing, defined as the transformation of materials and information into goods for the satisfaction of human needs, is one of the primary wealth-generating activities for any nation and contributes significantly to employment (Chryssolouris, 2006). Furthermore, in the past decades, institutions in general have been increasingly interested and involved in defining sustainability and social responsibility. In addition, social and political pressures have led to the creation of new regulations and policies that support new business opportunities around global sustainability (Lanz et al., 2014). Taking these into account, the primary objective of the SO SMART Deliverable D1.2 “Report on key indicators of social sustainability” is to provide a comprehensive set of indicators and main dimensions, which will be exploited within the context of the SO SMART project, in order to approach and investigate the concept of social sustainability for the factories of the future.
Within this context, this document (D1.2) provides a comprehensive, long-list of indicators related to manufacturing which will be further examined for their relation with social and economic sustainability. This long-list of indicators is included in the current document; additionally, for complementarity purposes, the link to an online sheet with the most updated version of the list is also provided, in case further enhancements are made to this list during the later stages of the project.
Furthermore, this long-list also provided directions towards selecting eleven (11) main dimensions of social sustainability. The dimensions aim to describe the space of social sustainability, while the indicators aim to make this more comprehensible. In general, it is expected that the indicators may be used to investigate which dimensions are met in terms of social sustainability. These main dimensions are expected to be further studied and be refined in the next phases of the project and to drive –together with additional available results- the future developments of SO SMART.
Identified relations of specific indicators from the provided long-list with the main dimensions of social sustainability have also been indicated. In order to conclude the examination of these dimensions and to indicate their measurability, a preliminary approach on how to evaluate these dimensions in terms of efficient social sustainability practice has also been reported. Furthermore, the beneficiary groups of social sustainability, which are expected to be further studied within the context of SO SMART, are identified and defined in this document. These beneficiary groups have been selected by considering clarity and smooth assimilation, while indicative relations with social sustainability indicators have also been established.
Concluding, it is noted that the current work has already been exploited in Task 1.3 where – among others- effort has been given to provide a more detailed analysis of the relations between the indicators and metrics specified in the current document. Further to this examination and its results, it is accordingly expected that the information provided in the current document may also be efficiently exploited to the next stages of the project as well.
D1.3 Assessment framework for current practices and future scenarios
The goal of this task is twofold: a) to create a reference to evaluate sustainability performances, in which current practices can be used as a baseline and desirable targets can be set; and b) to identify the main drivers that impact on social and economic sustainability. Qualitative methods will be used, enhanced by multivariate analysis (e.g. correlations, regressions, explorative factor analyses) based on available quantitative data. This addresses the need to increase the shared understanding of what social sustainability means and how it should be evaluated. The deliverable answer how to identify social sustainability and how to estimate its impact to economic performance (which scope, KPIs, dimensions etc. are relevant), and how to identify sustainable culture and its impact on economic performance (culture dimensions, attractors, success-related driving forces, etc.)
The main outcome of this task is an assessment framework that includes selected Social sustainability dimensions associated to Performance Indicators. The assessment framework’s calculus includes a set of indicators (201) and identified relationships. These relationships show what social sustainability and corporate culture indicators are linked to the actual measurable performance indicators.
The Gap Analysis of the work done showed that there is a lot of different analysis available yet advisedly or unknowingly, with inadequate information to handle a complete socio- technical system. This means, that the viewpoint to assess social sustainability has been constrained to softer indicators without linkage to the actual work performance, quality and complexity.
D1.4 The SO SMART case for the socially sustainable ecosystem
The deliverable 1.4 describes three “AS-IS” scenarios where an ecosystem including the interactions of the individual, the company, and the society perspective are pictured. The scenarios’ theoretical basis is a literature review, a company survey focusing on social sustainability practices, and research covering important KPIs in social sustainability practices. The report provides narratives focusing on the relationship between a persona and a company. The personas are used to communicate narratively about stakeholder needs and wants in relation to what the company and society have to offer.
The three scenarios are based on a subset of a literature review including research papers and articles, exploring various stakeholder needs, wants and priorities.
The scenarios are built up in the following structure:
• Name, age, education; objective description of the persona and the setting
• The individual’s perspective on the situation
• The industry’s perspective on the situation
• The societal perspective on the situation
Finally, the report maps the level to which previously proposed dimensions of Social Sustainability (taken from Task 1.3 of the SO SMART project) are represented in the scenarios. The aim is to use the scenarios here as a starting point for forthcoming work in WP 3 and WP 4 of SO SMART.
D2.1 Report on social sustainability factors targeting the economic profit
Manufacturing, defined as the transformation of materials and information into goods for the satisfaction of human needs, is one of the primary wealth-generating activities for any nation and contributes significantly to employment (Chryssolouris, 2006). A question that has arisen, is how social sustainability can be related to the economic profitability of manufacturing enterprises. The investigation of this query is expected to enable us picture a generic model for economically profitable factories through social sustainability.
Taking these into account, the primary objective of the SO SMART Deliverable D2.1 “Report on social sustainability factors targeting the economic profit” is to identify the social sustainability factors and key performance indicators (KPIs) which could potentially be related to the economic profit of such a model. The second objective of this work is to examine and eventually identify the expected impact, interrelations and dependencies of the identified factors. The identified factors together with the resolved interrelations and interdependencies will be considered in the course of the project towards the implementation of a model for economically profitable factories through social sustainability.
In order to accomplish the aforementioned objectives, firstly a set of frequently used factors related to social sustainability is presented. Each of these factors is then analysed into several sets of indicators for these social sustainability factors. Secondly, in a similar context, a set of frequently employed economic profitability factors is presented and then the according economic profitability indicators are indicated. In all cases, all factors and indicators are also accompanied by widely used definitions gathered from various sources.
After the initial collection of potentially inter-related social sustainability factors and economic profitability indicators, selected sets of expected interrelations are presented. For example, in some cases security as a social sustainability factor is related with monetary gains while in another case the educational level, as a social sustainability factor is associated with the efficiency and growth of a manufacturing company. It is considered that the presented, expected interrelations and dependencies between social sustainability factors and economic profitability indicators is one of the first approaches aiming to gradually identify in more concrete way, these established interrelations.
Furthermore, the exploitation of these identified interrelations and assessments is discussed in the conclusions, providing the directions for the next task and especially for Task 2.2 “Model for economically profitable factories through social sustainability.
D2.2 Model for economically profitable factories through social sustainability
The clear aim of Work package 2 is to describe a “New model for economically profitable factories through social sustainability”. The deliverable document’s objective is to describe a new model where social sustainability is a core approach for achieving economic profitability in companies while balancing industrial, societal and individual requirements, as well as being key for long-term sustainable development. This model is a continuation of the findings of SO SMART Deliverable D2.1 Report on social sustainability factors targeting the economic profit, which provided a set of social sustainability factors that are potentially related with economic profitability of a manufacturing enterprise. The model described here breaks down economic and socially sustainable factors into related indicators and qualitatively indicates their mutual interactions. The findings provided in the current deliverable may also be used as an input in D3.1 “Report on corporate culture factors for stimulating environment” and other tasks that run in parallel or during the later phases of the SO SMART project.
The second objective of this work is to present a practical application of the provided model by introducing the Teaching Factory concept which can support the implementation of a model for economically profitable factories through social sustainability.
D3.1 Report on corporate culture factors for stimulating environment
The main task of D3.1 is to determine the correlation between corporate social sustainability culture and corporate success with the help of surveys and multivariate analyses.
As a result of all aspects of interaction between the economy, ecology and social circumstances, sustainability has become a major economic factor. For successful manufacturing in the future the implementation of strategies for sustainability in the company is of considerable importance, not only as the right response with respect to the global challenges, but also with respect to the opportunities that sustainability management offers to the company. Therefore, sustainability is recognized as a success-related factor of corporate management attitudes.
In spite of this considerable knowledge, a practice of sustainability management has not yet been implemented that is in accordance with the necessity of recognizing sustainability as a fundamental approach for dealing with the global challenges of the future and political willingness.
In order to make sustainability management of significant relevance for the management, the impact of implemented sustainability on companies’ performances needs to be explained. The aspects of the effectiveness of sustainability management are analysed in connection with the work of SO SMART, placing the focus on social sustainability, rather than on the basis of ecological, technical or financial measures. Social sustainability has in turn been identified as a measurable characteristic of the attitude and conduct within the corporate culture. Moreover, significant differences could be worked out in the corporate culture that differentiates financially successful companies from those that are not based on measured cultural profiles. Multivariate analytical methods have been applied in order to justify a successful correlation between corporate social sustainability culture and company success. The findings of the study are undergoing further development in the following work packages to recommend actions for social sustainability management.
The evaluation to be reported here pertains to the following gathered data: Panel data of 15 European member countries (n = 971 after rectification) and data of eight German companies (n = 207 after rectification). Both sets of data contain results of a questionnaire as well as data concerning the success of the company. For the panel survey, these success data are questionnaire items too. For the eight companies, objective success indicators such as EBIT and other parameters have been surveyed. Therefore, company success data of the panel data and the specific companies’ data are not directly comparable and are evaluated separately.
Based on content and item analysis, four independent variables were established:
• “Sustainability strategy and leadership”
• “Mission, communication and learning”
• “Social care and work life”
• “Loyalty and identification”
Furthermore, one dependent variable “company success” was created in a scaled as well as in a dichotomized version. For the panel data, the dichotomized version was created by contrasting the lowest 25 per cent (C25 and lower) with the highest 25 per cent (C75 and higher). For the specific companies’ data, the scaled and dichotomized variables were
created by ratings based on the objective parameters of each company.
There were high correlations especially between the independent variables (factors) “Sustainability strategy and leadership” and “Mission, communication and learning”, even though they were based on different factors. Because these dependencies led to a high co- linearity, the multiple regressions of company success on the independent variables were performed with one or the other one of these variables.
In the multiple regression analyses, “Sustainability strategy and leadership” is highly (and positively) related to company success, and “Mission, communication and learning” is highly related to company success as well. This suggests that a systematically performed corporate sustainability strategy leadership – which goes along with openness, responsibility, participation of employees, and mutual trust and respect, and emphasis on learning and communication – is positively related to corporate success.
In contrast, aspects of social care, such as reward systems, equal rights, care and provision of the company, are only related to company success as far as these aspects coincide with a sustainability strategy leadership. (In fact, these aspects should follow from a sustainability strategy leadership). But when reward systems, equal rights, care and provision appear but are not related to a sustainability strategy leadership, they do not positively correspond to company success. Therefore, these aspects of employee orientation only have an effect on success if they are anchored within a sustainability strategy leadership.
“Loyalty and identification” of the employees with their company is a significant (and positive) predictor of company success in the panel data too. In contrast, in the specific companies’ data, the relationship is significant but negative. This might hint about cultural peculiarities in Germany; specifically “Loyalty and identification” seems not to have a positive impact on company success if detached from a sustainability strategy leadership of the company. (For example “too much” harmony might have a positive impact on loyalty but not on corporate performance.) Methodologically, the negative relation of “Loyalty and identification” and company success seems to be due to a suppressor effect.
The results reported so far were basically the same when a discriminant analysis with the dichotomized company success variable was performed. In case of the panel data, the discriminant function yielded 83,5% correct classifications; for the specific companies data, this function yielded 70,9% correct classifications.
An additional regression analysis with single items led to similar results. Significant items emphasized strategy, positive development, and social aspects in the relationships with the employees.
To conclude, corporate success goes along with a sustainability strategy that is strategically planned and performed by leadership, and that is expressed by an emphasis on learning, open communication, responsibility, participation, trust, and respect. This positive strategy might result in enhanced “Loyalty and identification” of employees as well as in justice in rewards, equal rights, care and provision. On the other hand, justice in rewards, equal rights, care and provision do not relate to company success if carried out in isolation without a link to sustainability. Similarly, “Loyalty and identification” of employees contribute to enhancing corporate success especially if based on a sustainability strategy leadership.
Inventory of good examples for stimulating workplaces
in partner organizations
The aim of Work package 3 is to Describe and support a “New vision for the stimulating environment in the Factories of the Future”. The purpose of deliverable D3.2 and the inventory is to provide empirical examples of social sustainability-oriented projects, actions and implementations at companies that demonstrate the positive effects (regarding economy, efficiency, innovation) that arise from interventions with a social sustainability angle, simultaneously showcasing stimulating workplaces as an enabler of social sustainability. The examples reported here are reported cases observed in industry, and are not influenced by the SO SMART project. Examples include companies from various countries such as SKF, BMW, Luxottica and Bitwise. Each of these examples have been connected to the 11 dimensions of social sustainability defined in WP1, and the goal in each case description has been to indicate positive effects that arise from interventions with a social sustainability angle.
In conclusion, there are many examples of successful interventions that support social sustainability in European Manufacturing – this deliverable has showcased some of these, further examples can be found in the online inventory.
D3.3 Report and lecture package describing the new vision
The following report describes the plan for a Report and Lecture package intended to convey how to implement the SO SMART vision for stimulating workplaces in Europe’s Factories of the Future. This vision is derived from previous work and results within the SO SMART project (to date).
The lecture package is intended as a modular quick introduction for the public as well as for academic and industrial partners and covers the following basic elements:
• An orientation in definitions of Social Sustainability, to acquaint the audience with the width of understandings and which definition best captures the challenges faced by future European Manufacturing industry. This module includes a run-through of upcoming social sustainability challenges.
• The “SO SMART ecosystem” multi-layer approach taking into account the perspectives of (1) the individual worker or prospective worker, (2) the industrial company, (3) the society/community and (4) the “landscape”, or national/international policy.
• A definition of “stimulating workplaces” that conveys the necessity of trying to achieve them in order to solve upcoming social sustainability challenges.
• The elicited needs of future industry, as expressed primarily in Workshops and earlier Work packages.
• The 11 dimensions of Social Sustainability for future factories as identified by the project, and which of them should be particularly addressed to achieve a socially sustainable corporate culture that leads to corporate success (pending the statistical treatment described in the results of D3.1)
• An overview of the results of SO SMART’s studies of European Corporate Practices, Financial indicators and Social sustainability initiatives and good examples of Tier 2 company implementations.
• The road map indicating a feasible way from the as-is challenges of today to a new vision for stimulating work environments in socially sustainable factories, where the main social sustainability challenges are met.
As many components of the SO SMART lecture and report package were still undergoing development at the time Deliverable 3.2 was reported, this report is to be regarded as a plan formed on the basis of the results to date.
Potential Impact:
POTENTIAL IMPACT
As a summary of all project results, the SO SMART CSA has suggested and described pilot scenarios for strengthening corporate culture factors that support financial success. Some pilot scenarios are detailed, including a Transfer Project that proposes how the main results of SO SMART could be rapidly implemented in European industry. If publically supported, a transfer project could enhance the transition to European social sustainability in manufacturing, especially in SMEs.
The potential socio-economic impact is potentially large, given that this, only 18-month, CSA has been able to produce a theoretical as well as empirical base for Socially Sustainability in the future European workplaces. The broad data from around 1000 respondents gives a clear indication that this is a valid and interesting field for the European commission to fund and enlarge. Provided a difficult demographic future of Europe it is vital for industry and society to prepare for times when the European citizens are too old to work. Social sustainability in manufacturing is necessary to retain skilled workers after pension and to attract young people.
During its entire duration, the project was to a great extent carried out in public, with frequent public appearances at scientific, industrial and popular science events as well as through the organization of recurring workshops where the interaction with participants was key to get input. It explicitly sought the advice of external experts in the fields of economics, finances and education. There was also an online discussion forum to keep the discussion going in between events. The consortium also collaborated closely with a group of experts from different domains, who were able to give inputs to the project.
The project could be described as a journey. If so, the trajectory started from an idea that improving the well-being and performance of human workers in manufacturing must be achievable without sacrificing company success. The journey then moved to a clear vision for future socially sustainable factories and concrete knowledge of the road ahead. To support a journey for the European industry, the SO SMART project partners are pleased to contribute a roadmap for research and education. We are also suggesting ’vehicles’, in the form of know-how, definitions, lecture and report packages, pilot scenarios, and measurement methods targeting corporate culture and economic success
MAIN DISSEMINATION ACTIVITIES AND EXPLOITATION OF RESULTS
D3.3 Report and lecture package describing the new vision
The following report describes the plan for a Report and Lecture package intended to convey how to implement the SO SMART vision for stimulating workplaces in Europe’s Factories of the Future. This vision is derived from previous work and results within the SO SMART project (to date).
The lecture package is intended as a modular quick introduction for the public as well as for academic and industrial partners and covers the following basic elements:
• An orientation in definitions of Social Sustainability, to acquaint the audience with the width of understandings and which definition best captures the challenges faced by future European Manufacturing industry. This module includes a run-through of upcoming social sustainability challenges.
• The “SO SMART ecosystem” multi-layer approach taking into account the perspectives of (1) the individual worker or prospective worker, (2) the industrial company, (3) the society/community and (4) the “landscape”, or national/international policy.
• A definition of “stimulating workplaces” that conveys the necessity of trying to achieve them in order to solve upcoming social sustainability challenges.
• The elicited needs of future industry, as expressed primarily in Workshops and earlier Work packages.
• The 11 dimensions of Social Sustainability for future factories as identified by the project, and which of them should be particularly addressed to achieve a socially sustainable corporate culture that leads to corporate success (pending the statistical treatment described in the results of D3.1)
• An overview of the results of SO SMART’s studies of European Corporate Practices, Financial indicators and Social sustainability initiatives and good examples of Tier 2 company implementations.
• The road map indicating a feasible way from the as-is challenges of today to a new vision for stimulating work environments in socially sustainable factories, where the main social sustainability challenges are met.
As many components of the SO SMART lecture and report package were still undergoing development at the time Deliverable 3.2 was reported, this report is to be regarded as a plan formed on the basis of the results to date, but final reports and lectures take further influence from the subsequent work done in WP4 and WP5.
D4.1 Recommendations on social sustainability and corporate culture
D4.1 explains the empirical findings as practical recommendations for transferring the knowledge to companies. The empirical analyses of D3.1 identified four social sustainability dimensions as success-related driving forces. More than 40 percent of a company’s success can be explained by the impacts of the four social sustainability dimensions.
The dimensions of a culture of social sustainability are explained with regard to their significance for the practical application of the findings.
The dimension ‘Sustainability Strategy and Leadership’ is shown as the connection of social sustainability with the corporate strategy, as an inspired and innovative orientation, process- controlled implemented with continuous improvement, a quality of governance (leadership) that illustrates social competence.
The dimension ‘Mission, Communication and Learning’ fosters employee development within the social sustainability approach. The advice for this dimension is to communicate a clear mission statement of social sustainability, which represents an attractive offer for a personal commitment from the employee and supports an attitude that recognizes social sustainability as relevant, and understands 'Learning' as an opportunity for advancing the development of each and every individual.
The dimension ‘Social Care and Work-life’ emphasizes social aspects within the company, which can be perceived under work-life balance and reward systems of the company. This dimension is found to relate to corporate success only to the extent that it results from a sustainability strategy.
The dimension ‘Loyalty and Identification’ concerns the employees’ perspective regarding their employer. This includes loyalty and identification with the company, which can also be expressed simultaneously by job involvement.
According to the findings of two SO SMART workshops, an EU transfer project of social sustainability is proposed. This project, entitled 'Social sustainability and benchmarking', is meant to substantiate the findings of SO SMART, establish them by practical work and prepare them for implementation in European corporate practice.
D4.2 Research and education roadmap
This deliverable describes the SO SMART Vision for a future: “Socially Sustainable and Successful Manufacturing Ecosystem: Good For Industry, Society And Individuals”.
Then, the Roadmap for Research and Education, developed drawing on the analysis of the gaps between the SO SMART Vision and the current status, is presented. It is composed by thee main sets of recommendations:
First, 11 Research Areas, in which further action is recommended, are detailed.
These are:
• Sustaining people in the system
• Closing the skills gap
• Ageing workforce
• Socially sustainable product life-cycle
• Culture, strategy, business model innovation
Second, 6 Recommendations for Education are outlined. These are:
• Tailoring interventions to enable individuals to develop throughout their life
• Strengthening relationships with industry
• Improving learning outcomes
• Developing reflective industrial societies
• Exploiting innovative technologies
• Sustaining educators’ professional development
Third,7 Recommendations for Policy Makers and stakeholders are reported. These are:
• Improving company engagement in socially sustainable manufacturing and spreading good practices
• Integrating socially sustainable manufacturing concepts, models and approaches into research, education and training
• Supporting companies in promoting a positive image of manufacturing and track levels of attractiveness especially among young people
• Evaluating the endorsement of common accounting standards for company disclosure of social sustainability related information and performance, and improving reporting
• Evaluating the development of a EU voluntary label promoting social sustainability excellence in the life-cycle
• Better aligning European and global approaches to social sustainability in manufacturing, while maintaining sensitivity to regional and local issues
• Balancing innovation and regulation for new types of business and technology
Finally, the Roadmap for Socially Sustainable Factories focuses on the company level and presents a six-step approach that manufacturers can adopt to address challenges of today, to become socially sustainable factories. It also shows the models, recommendations and tools developed by SO SMART to help manufacturers to progress on this journey.
D4.3 Report on Pilot scenarios for social sustainability
and corporate culture
The conventional observation of the business world might be intuitively tempted to see a contradiction between economic success and social sustainability. Any company employee is always linked to the company internally as an employee, but is also a member of the society in which the company is operating. Both aspects have to be treated differently when it comes to describing social sustainability. In this project we decided to firstly focus on the question of how to describe and possibly improve the internal situation of social sustainability.
Based on the work in this project we report that social sustainability and economic success do not have to be contradictions. On the contrary, by carrying out a survey within companies and conducting a European-wide poll we found that a socially sustainable situation for the employees is linked to economic success in such a way that a company striving for social sustainability will be economically more successful than one that does not do it.
In this report we connect this result with two important facts:
Already today it is possible to find enterprises that are living examples of the claim we make. Beyond that, our results can be used in a methodological way in order to improve and understand a given situation of any enterprise in the space of social sustainability.
D5.1 Community Building Plan
This deliverable presents on-going and upcoming (to date) activities within the SO SMART CSA for community building. The deliverable reports on timelines for activities and purposes and intentions for the community, both in terms of what the consortium will request of active community partners, and what the SO SMART CSA will deliver to them.
The main activities for establishing, building and maintaining a community are manifested in the form of planned workshops at different conference events and in the form of online forums for:
• sharing knowledge of SO SMART road-mapping results as they emerge,
• disseminating invitations to upcoming events, and
• discussing social sustainability challenges of future manufacturing.
The deliverable also suggests ways to track the progress of the community building.
D5.2 Workshops and forums regarding the SO-SMART ecosystem model
The purpose of this deliverable is to briefly describe the activities carried out by the SO SMART Consortium in order to create awareness about the project; to promote the involvement of the European stakeholders and policy makers in the development of the SO SMART Ecosystem Model; to disseminate the project's results in the European industrial and global scientific communities. Under TAMPERE’s coordination, the partners will disseminate the results of the project with publications in journals, presentations at scientific conferences and will also organize a number of workshops. A project portal will be developed (in synchronization with WP6) and be used as the central information system for all project-related information and activities. It will consist of a private and a public section. The private section will be restricted to consortium members and used for internal data storage and exchange as well as work. The public part will be published and widely advertised. Furthermore, preparation of press releases and other dissemination material, such as a logo, templates with a common SO-SMART graphical profile, a standard PPT presentation, leaflet, poster and newsletters, etc., will be the main focus for this task.
The tangible outputs are:
• Workshops involving stakeholders and experts to debate current practices and future scenarios for social and economic sustainable manufacturing from an eco-systemic perspective;
• Academic publications in journals, presentations in scientific conferences and at least two workshops: 1) at ManuFuture conference 2013 with consortia, Tier 1 and Tier 2 partners; and 2) at NMP Industrial technologies conference in 2014, openly for identified stakeholders.
• A project portal will be developed and used as the central information system for all project- related information and activities. It will consist of a private and a public section.
• General audience and industrially focused press releases and other dissemination material.
D5.3 Online inventory of Social Sustainability interest groups
and extended networks
This deliverable describes an online inventory initiated within SO SMART to provide an overview of organizations, initiatives, interest groups and similar entities that discuss social sustainability, work environment and employability issues. The purpose of this inventory is twofold; a) to better understand what initiatives and practice are already in place, b) to simultaneously act as a basis for dissemination across different countries.
At the time that this report is written, the growing online inventory contains 45 different organizations/initiatives that have been identified by project partners to connect with 1 or more of 3 main focus characteristics. The minimum requirement for being included in the inventory was connectedness to the topic of social sustainability. Yet whilst all the collected organizations and initiatives claim to be working with this sector, less than 15% were given a high ranking, in terms of social sustainability emphasis level. Which indicates that this concept is still limited in industrial understanding and application.
The Online inventory is a working document, which will continue to be updated throughout the SO SMART projects when new interest groups are identified. The inventory will also be disseminated publicly on the project website www.sosmarteu.eu.
D5.4 Online forum for exchange of ideas and input for Social Sustainability interest groups and extended networks
It is essential for the SO SMART project’s impact to provide grounds for the extended networks of engaged manufacturing community members participating in and contributing to our workshops and related events to re-connect with each other, learn more about social sustainability and partake of the generated results and content. The online forum is an important platform for making the results from the project’s activities visible as they are generated, and also for the consortium members to stay in touch with the community. Another function is to provide them a platform of sharing what they know, thus adding to the collective understanding of Social Sustainability.
The result is an online community facilitated by social media to spread public results and engage past and present participants in further discussions on how to move Social Sustainability forwards.
D6.1 SO SMART Web Portal
The SO SMART public website was created in the platform CPS3.4 and published on March, 6 2013 and has been used to communicate information about the project to the public. It brings together file- and link sharing platforms with project news and a channel for public interaction.
The internal project website used the platform Basecamp.com to coordinate the activities, communication and file sharing internally. This site was created September 1, 2013.
This formal deliverable was delayed to an internal administrative misunderstanding. The internal and external Web portals have been operational in accordance with the dates above.
D3.3 Report and lecture package describing the new vision
The following report describes the plan for a Report and Lecture package intended to convey how to implement the SO SMART vision for stimulating workplaces in Europe’s Factories of the Future. This vision is derived from previous work and results within the SO SMART project (to date).
The lecture package is intended as a modular quick introduction for the public as well as for academic and industrial partners and covers the following basic elements:
• An orientation in definitions of Social Sustainability, to acquaint the audience with the width of understandings and which definition best captures the challenges faced by future European Manufacturing industry. This module includes a run-through of upcoming social sustainability challenges.
• The “SO SMART ecosystem” multi-layer approach taking into account the perspectives of (1) the individual worker or prospective worker, (2) the industrial company, (3) the society/community and (4) the “landscape”, or national/international policy.
• A definition of “stimulating workplaces” that conveys the necessity of trying to achieve them in order to solve upcoming social sustainability challenges.
• The elicited needs of future industry, as expressed primarily in Workshops and earlier Work packages.
• The 11 dimensions of Social Sustainability for future factories as identified by the project, and which of them should be particularly addressed to achieve a socially sustainable corporate culture that leads to corporate success (pending the statistical treatment described in the results of D3.1)
• An overview of the results of SO SMART’s studies of European Corporate Practices, Financial indicators and Social sustainability initiatives and good examples of Tier 2 company implementations.
• The road map indicating a feasible way from the as-is challenges of today to a new vision for stimulating work environments in socially sustainable factories, where the main social sustainability challenges are met.
As many components of the SO SMART lecture and report package were still undergoing development at the time Deliverable 3.2 was reported, this report is to be regarded as a plan formed on the basis of the results to date, but final reports and lectures take further influence from the subsequent work done in WP4 and WP5.
List of Websites:
Public web site
TEDx SO SMART presenttion on demographis problems
Main contact:
Professor Johan Stahre
Chair of Production Systems
Head of Division of Production Systems
Dept. of Product and Production Development
Chalmers University of Technology
SE-412 96 Göteborg, SWEDEN
Visiting adress: Hörsalsvägen 7A
Tel: +46 703 088 838 Fax: +46 31 772 3660
Email: Johan.Stahre@Chalmers.se
