Web-Based Sustainability Analysis System for Palm Oil Processing

Abstract

The role of the food processing industry become vital due to the globally increased food demand. Malaysia is the second-largest palm oil producer in the world. The palm oil is used to produce food products such as vegetable oil, the main component of butter, margarine and, Vanaspati. Moreover, most of the edible oil in the market is produced by palm oil compared with other types of vegetable oil such as soybean oil, rapeseed oil and, sunflower oil. Therefore, sustainable development is particularly important in this industry, especially from the environmental aspect. Sustainability development involves interconnected between three pillars of sustainability which is economic, social and environmental. The concept of sustainability is based on the interdependency of the relationship between humans and the environment. The existence of sustainability is essential to maintain or improve the quality of life of people from time to time without the excessive use of ecological capacity. The objective of this paper is to report on the development of a web-based palm oil processing sustainability analysis system to assist the decision-makers in the industry to analyse and acknowledge the degree of sustainability in a factory. The decision-maker consists of various parties such as stakeholders, managers in the production division and also the owner of the factory. The decision-maker will choose each theme, indicators, and sub-indicators according to their significance in the sustainability of the factory and make the selections according to their observations or expert opinion. The data obtained from decision-makers will be calculated and analysed using the Analytic Hierarchical Process (AHP) method. The result enables decision-makers to choose whether to maintain the current sustainability effect or to make changes through conservation programs. Conservation programs should only be carried out if the results obtained indicate that they need to go through the specific program. It is hoped that this web-based decision analysis system can provide rational and accurate decisions to decision-makers to assess the sustainability level of palm oil processing plant easily and to provide solutions for every problem. System developed for the assessment of sustainability able to provide information to stakeholders when decision making is needed regarding environmental issues. Moreover, sustainability information shared between the industries able to improve the quality of their operations.