A framework for early-stage sustainability assessment of innovation projects enabled by weighted sum multi-criteria decision analysis in the presence of uncertainty.

A two-level hierarchical framework for early-stage sustainability assessment (FESSA) amongst a set of alternatives applicable from the earliest stages of process or product development is introduced, and its use in combination with an improved method weighted-sum method multi-criteria decision analysis (WSM-MCDA) in the presence of uncertainty is presented through application to a case study based upon a real-world decision scenario from speciality polymer manufacture. The approach taken addresses the challenge faced by those responsible for innovation management in the manufacturing process industries to make simultaneously timely and rational decisions early in the innovation cycle when knowledge gaps and uncertainty about the options tend to be at their highest. The Computed Uncertainty Range Evaluations (CURE) WSM-MCDA method provides better discrimination than the existing Multiple Attribute Range Evaluations (MARE) method without the computational burden of generating heuristic outcome distributions via Monte-Carlo simulation.