Decision Support System for the Sustainability Assessment of Critical Raw Materials in SMEs

Technology-oriented Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) face the problem of shortage of crucial resources, as functional components may contain up to 40 elements. Therefore, the assessment of alternative raw materials is of growing importance for the discipline of strategic product design and procurement processes as a topic of Information Systems (IS) research. Aspects of sustainability consider both ecological and economic objectives. Methods to assess companies' sustainability regarding its raw material consumption are an essential precondition for resource efficiency. This work at hand develops a conceptual decision and IS integration model for the assessment of products based on their raw material composition and implements this model as a software prototype, following a design-science approach. Its application is demonstrated in a real case scenario. The application's results show the comprehensibility and transparency in evaluating products' sustainability and enables companies to compare different alternative products, from both an ecological and economic point of view.