Understanding different stakeholders of sustainable product and service-based systems using genetic algorithm

Abstract

Service-oriented approach or a combination of Product-Service System (PSS) is often regarded as more promising to traditional discreet product selling. To have a sustainable product or service, PSS systems must equally satisfy the three stakeholders of sustainability viz. people, planet, and profit generated by the companies. However, this is often not the case as the other stakeholders often ignore interest of the planet, as a stakeholder. Government tax incentives could act as an enabler to mitigate this difference. In this work, we explore this issue by developing methodologies to optimize the needs of various stakeholders. We develop equations to express the three Ps of sustainability to find out appropriate government incentives as tax on people and product-manufacturing companies to make products and services more sustainable, assuming that the taxes collected are utilized in restoring the environment. We use Multi-Objective Genetic Algorithm to find the optimized taxes for some possible combinations of sale price and number of units to be manufactured. We take a case and explain the application of this novel methodology for a car manufacturing scenario.