Rapid Sustainable Plant Assessment (RSPA) - Experiences of practical application and its impact on the further development

Sustainability may have the means to ensure that manufacturing can prevail at the forerun of modern societies, ensuring a profitable productivity without harming the environment and societal values. Without establishing means to evaluate how well the sustainability is carried out in the manufacturing industries, this cause is lost. The Rapid Sustainable Plant Assessment (RSPA) tool was developed in 2012, to assess how well manufacturing enterprises are doing in the different dimensions of sustainability. This paper discusses the development that the RSPA tool has undertaken in order to increase the general applicability of the tool and the industry direction created in order to assess specific industry's characteristics. Also, primary results of industrial application are presented. The paper also provides an outlook on further development of the tool and proposes mechanisms to seamlessly integrate the RSPA results to more detailed analysis methods such as the multi-perspective modelling.