Sustainable manufacturing evaluation of the food industry: a case of rice manufacturing

The food industry remains one of the significant sectors supporting the world economy. The continuous rapid population growth will surely increase the demand for food. Thus, it is imperative to consider the continuous improvement that will support sustainability in food manufacturing. The food industry needs to work on ensuring sustainable manufacturing implementation or integration into
processes and product outputs. Hence, this paper needs to assess emerging technologies and practices as the sector faces the challenges of developing and maintaining a sustainable food supply. Therefore, the entire sustainability aspect of agricultural food production (rice production in particular), processing, and integrated supply chain will need to be investigated to ensure that sustainable practices
are embedded adequately within the processing supply chain. The study used a mixed method to analyze and evaluate the critical indicators in the triple bottom line of sustainability. The analytical hierarchy process (AHP) approach is used in this study together with a predetermined set of key performance indicators (KPIs) to analyze the sustainability performance of the food manufacturing industry and facilitate the creation of a strategy. The result identified “environmental” as the most paramount sustainability factor, with other highly ranked indicators that cover the three factors.