A Multi-Criteria Framework for Sustainable Product Portfolio Management: Balancing Profitability, Circularity, and Supply Chain Resilience

Manufacturing firms increasingly need to evaluate product portfolios beyond conventional financial indicators. Sustainability pressures, resource constraints, technological complexity, and supply chain disruptions require decision-making systems that consider economic contribution, circularity opportunities, and operational continuity. This thesis develops a Multi-Criteria Decision-Making framework integrating profitability, circularity potential and readiness, and supply chain resilience in product portfolio management. The research develops a single-case-study design in the tire manufacturing industry. Six anonymized products belonging to the same product family are evaluated using company-authorized evidence and structured consultations with specialists from Sales, Finance, Manufacturing, Research and Development, Sustainability, and Procurement. Quantitative information and expert judgment are converted into a common five-point scoring scale. An initial Analytic Hierarchy Process weighting procedure was considered but rejected because the pairwise-comparison matrices did not satisfy the conventional consistency requirement. Final dimension weights were therefore derived from the experts’ complete ordinal rankings. Under the baseline configuration, profitability received a weight of 50%, circularity potential and readiness 30%, and supply chain resilience 20%. Product-level profitability and circularity scores were authorized for the empirical analysis. However, resilience data and derived scores could not be disclosed because of their commercial sensitivity. Rather than introducing unsupported values, the study applies bounded score intervals, break-even analysis, and sensitivity analysis to determine which product comparisons remain robust and which depend on confidential resilience evidence. The results identify Product D as the strongest profitability-led alternative, Product F as the strongest circularity-led alternative, and Product C as comparatively balanced. Product E represents a circular development opportunity, while Products A and B remain the weakest alternatives across the permitted resilience range. The exact ranking of Products C, D, and F requires internal resilience verification. The thesis contributes a transparent product-level framework supporting prioritization, redesign, investment, risk mitigation, and rationalization decisions while accommodating commercially sensitive information.