Getasew Ashagrie (PhD)Ayalsew Dagnew (Mr.) Co-AdvisorAbebaw Mengistu2025-04-252025-04-252024-11https://etd.aau.edu.et/handle/123456789/5370Since sustainability is a multidisciplinary concept, it requires strategic prioritization in today's world. Sustainable manufacturing aims to reduce adverse effects while enhancing the supply chain. However, many manufacturers continue to use substantial resources and produce waste and pollution during the process. Therefore, it is essential for manufacturers to seek operations that maximize economic viability and societal well-being while internalizing environmental externalities. Despite this, there is a lack of an effective multi-criteria decision-making methodology tailored to assess the sustainability performance of plastic cup manufacturing methods, considering the complex interdependencies between environmental, economic, and social dimensions. The purpose of this study is to apply the concept of sustainability to plastic cup manufacturing methods. By using a statistical frequency-counting method for indicator prioritization and carefully selecting indicator sets, the study employs the multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) methodology of the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to assess the sustainability performance of these methods. The assessment examines the sustainability performance of different manufacturing methods and the contributions of various indicators based on the three sustainability pillars. A nine-point Saaty comparison scale is used for pairwise assessments, and the Borda count method is applied for overall sustainability evaluation. According to the analysis, vacuum forming has a higher overall sustainability performance score of 58.23%, compared to pressure forming, which scored 41.74%. The sustainability performance of each method was also examined, along with the contributions of each indicator. In the environmental dimension, pressure forming showed better performance with a score of 5.40%. In contrast, vacuum forming outperformed in the economic and social dimensions, with scores of 9.64% and 21.07%, respectively. This thesis demonstrates the effective application of a multi-criteria decision-making methodology to evaluate the sustainability performance of cup manufacturing methods. The research also proposes a framework that offers an accurate assessment and comparison of the sustainability performance of injection molding and thermoforming methods, with injection molding performing better.en-USMulti-criteria Decision MakingSustainabilitySustainable ManufacturingAnalytic Hierarchy Process (AHP)Sustainability Performance Assessment.Thesis