Sustainability analysis for indicator-based benchmarking solutions

In times of scarce resources, the concept of sustainability management has become tremendously important within today's business environment. The integration of a sustainable perspective into corporate management structures does not only satisfy the involved stakeholders, but rather prepares a company to cope with the continuously increasing challenges on the markets. The Fraunhofer Institute for Production Systems and Design Technology (IPK) offers the BenchmarkIndex-Analysis that allows especially small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) to measure their business performance based on selected indicators of the Balanced Scorecard (BSC). Since the methodology and the broad dissemination of the BenchmarkIndex represent a promising opportunity for a wide application of sustainability management solutions, an analysis of existing and potential sustainability indicators was carried out to identify how an adaption of the BenchmarkIndex can consider the long-term economic, but in particular the environmental and social aspects of sustainability.