A Causal Model of the Sustainable Use of Resources: A Case Study on a Woodworking Process

Tomas Macak, Jan Hron and Jaromir Stusek
Additional contact information
Tomas Macak: Department of Management, Faculty of Economics and Management, Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, 16500 Prague, Czech Republic
Jan Hron: Department of Management, Faculty of Economics and Management, Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, 16500 Prague, Czech Republic
Jaromir Stusek: Department of Management, Faculty of Economics and Management, Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, 16500 Prague, Czech Republic

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 12, issue 21, 1-22

Abstract: Controlling the life cycle of natural resources, from extraction within the design and the production of products to handling waste, is crucial to green growth and is a part of advancing a resource-efficient, circular economy where everything is fully utilised. One way of using resources more efficiently for a greener economy is to design a production process that takes cost and energy savings into account. From this point of view, the goal of the article is to create a causal description of sustainable woodworking—especially using renewable and non-renewable resources—in relation to changes in the concentration levels of CO 2 in the atmosphere. After estimating the partial parameters, this model can be used to predict or simulate different CO 2 concentration levels in the atmosphere—for example, based on the ratio of renewable to non-renewable sources. After a theoretical description, the subsequent practical goal is to identify the optimal settings of wood-milling process parameters for either minimising energy consumption per workpiece and unit variable costs or for maximising the overall customer benefit. For this purpose, a complete factorial design was used, and based on this, the consumption energy (direct cost) optimisation of the production process was supplemented by a profitable production calculation. The effect of reducing variability was verified using a statistical F-test. The impact of minimising energy consumption (economically expressed as the mean profit) was then validated using a Student’s t -test.

Keywords: energy consumption; economic parameters; milling process parameters; full-factorial design (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/21/9057/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/21/9057/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:12:y:2020:i:21:p:9057-:d:437858

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().