Incorporating sustainability concepts to management models of textile Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (SUMA)

Micro-small-medium-sized enterprises (MSME) constitute 99% of formally established enterprises in Latin-American countries such as Ecuador. However, MSMEs’ levels of productivity are often exceedingly low due to inefficient management of activities, times, and resources. These MSMEs are also confronted with the global trend to become more sustainable. Although theoretical models on sustainability have been developed, we identify the need to develop a practical model that can be easily implemented by MSMEs to support sustainability. This project aims at designing, implementing and validating, what we call, a SUstainable MAnagement (SUMA) model focused on the uptake of sustainability decisions into a Time-Driven Activity-Based (TDABC) Costing Model to obtain improved levels of performance and sustainability. We conjecture that TDABC can be implemented at a relatively small scale in MSMEs and that this model can be extended to calculate the cost consequences of sustainability decisions. To this end, three case studies will be used to analyze the current situation of MSMEs in the Ecuadorian textile industry and follow up with the SUMA implementation.