The growing importance of sustainable development as a policy objective has initiated a debate about those suitable frameworks and tools useful for policy makers when making a sustainable decision. Composite indicators (CIs) aggregate multidimensional issues into one index, thus providing comprehensive information. However, it is frequently argued that CIs are too subjective, as their results undesirably depend on the normalization method, a specific weighting scheme, and the aggregation method of subindicators. This article applies different combinations of normalization, weighting, and aggregation methods for the assessment of an industrial case study, with the aim of determining the best scheme for constructing CIs. The applied methodology gradually aggregates sustainable development indicators into sustainability sub-indices and, finally, to a composite sustainability index. The normalization methods included in this analysis are: minimum-maximum, distance to a reference, and the percentages of annual differences over consecutive years. Equal weightings, the 'benefit of the doubt' approach, and budget allocation process were used for determining the weights of individual indicators and sustainability sub-indices. The linear, geometric, and non-compensatory multi-criteria approaches (NCMCs) were used as aggregation methods. The NCMC is modified to fit the two-level aggregation, then to sub-indices, and finally to a composite sustainable index. Also, a penalty criterion is introduced into the evaluation process with the aim of motivating the company to move towards sustainable development. The results are analyzed by variance-based sensitivity analysis. According to the results the recommended scheme for CIs' construction is: distance to a reference- benefit of the doubt-linear aggregation. © US Government 2012

Breweries are responding to some sustainabil-ity challenges but many of them find sustainability assessment and reporting to be very complex, difficult, and time-consuming tasks. Despite several existing frameworks for the sustainability assessment of companies, none of them specifically addresses breweries. They do not provide them with a transparent, comprehensive, and integrated approach to sustainability assessment, adjusted to the particular circumstances of traditional beer production. In view of these requirements by the brewing industry, this article aims to support breweries in sustainability assessment activities by proposing a methodology for integrated performance assessment. This methodology proposes environmental, societal, economic, and integrated indicators reflecting the characteristics of the brewing industry, compatible with those general indicators proposed by the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI). Although it is important to assess sustainability using several indicators, it may sometimes be difficult to make decisions based on a wide number of performance measurements. Thus, the proposed methodology gradually aggregates sustainable development indicators into sustainability sub-indices and, finally, to a composite sustainability index that tracks integrated information on the economic, environmental, and societal performances of a brewery over time. They can be used both internally, for the identification of "hot spots" and externally, for sustainability reporting and stakeholder engagement. Since breweries strive to outperform their competitors, the proposed methodology enables the benchmarking of a brewery against best performance practices, as a catalyst for improvement and innovation, by providing benchmark values for each indicator. The case study presented in this article illustrates how the proposed methodology could be easily applied in practice, and stimulates breweries to test their effectiveness themselves. © 2011 Springer-Verlag

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