Integrating Sustainability into a Goal Programming Exercise

This paper discusses a sustainability exercise for use in a management science course. Specifically, we discuss an exercise using goal programming and Excel Solver for making supplier selection decisions incorporating a triple bottom line approach (economic, environmental and social performance objectives). The multiple, conflicting objectives and the qualitative nature of the social performance objective require the use of multi-criteria decision-making. Our goal programming exercise requires only Excel and could be expanded to include additional triple bottom line criteria