Abstract:
An important first step when embarking on the sustainability improvement journey is readiness assessment. Performing readiness assessment is a systematic analysis of an organizations’ abilities to undertake
the potential sustainability improvement initiatives by identifying the weak areas of the organization and
helps to mitigate or close these weak areas before the implementation. However, the cement manufacturing industry is a key player in Indian industry and involves many environmental, social and economic
impacts. The cement manufacturing process is also a high energy and resource consuming process. The
current study assessed the readiness of Indian cement industry for the overall sustainability improvement. The model provided by Sangwan et al. (2018) for sustainability readiness self-assessment has been
adapted for the assessment. An offline survey among a cross functional team of experts from a large cement company was carried out for collecting data on the readiness assessment questions along with real
time observations at different plant locations of the company. It is observed that the case organization
is doing well and is ready for adopting sustainability improvement initiatives but it needs to focus on
developing water related policies for better sustainability. The results provide a complete visualization
for the sustainability improvement initiatives in terms of seven resources of air, water, infrastructure, energy, material, money, and people. This readiness assessment tool was found to be simple to use by the
managerial/supervisory level employees for the self-assessment of organizational preparedness
