Modelling manufacturing evolution: thoughts on sustainable industrial development

With many tools available for industrial sustainability, it appears that problems now lie in implementation. Management uncertainties and other barriers are undermining progress toward sustainable industrial development. With the aim of modelling manufacturing evolution, this paper presents a study that integrates manufacturing cladistics, an evolutionary classification scheme from the biological sciences, with evolutionary systems modelling, from the physical sciences. The study highlights the problems associated with the implementation of new technologies and practices. This new approach is then evaluated in the context of sustainable manufacturing. The aim would be to guide transformations and explore the evolutionary differences between sustainable and non-sustainable organisations, and identify new structures offering industry novel solutions for sustainability. (c) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.