Multi-objective business process optimisation: a business sustainability approach

Business models have evolved from financial centricity to triple bottom line (TBL) centric. The challenge is the quantification of all business activities, as contributing to TBL, and predicting optimisation interventions to maximise TBL benefits. This research adopts 4IR tools to predict TBL optimisation. Chemical and business process sciences are integrated in developing a 4IR based predictive model to forecast the impact of change on TBL. Business processes capture business activities to develop a model representing the business. The model outputs are adopted to develop objective functions for the economic, environmental, and social aspects, for the multi-objective TBL optimisation. The reference TBL is defined, with the optimised TBL targets determined by reverse engineering the objective functions. The model is applied to a logistics business, which forecasts savings of 28 to 44 million rands (USD 2–3.2 million), 3,000 to 5,000 tons CO2 emissions reductions and 30,000 to 53,000 man-hours reduction.