A RFA (it is more relevant for developing countries to refer to this as RFA) is an understanding of the flow of material and energy resources through the selected system. The concept could be easily explained with Figure below.

If quantities of different materials and energy could be depicted as in the figure, it would be obvious what are the resources of importance, who is using the resources and what are the resources that are being wasted and how much. Once a figure like this is available, the action points become obvious.

A real-life example of a MFA in a developing country is the case study of Tirupur in the south of India

Tirupur is a major center for the production of knitted cotton hosiery. The town is located in the south of India and has population of about 300,000. The 4,000 small units in the town specialize in different aspects of the manufacturing process. The aggregate annual value of production in the town is around US $ 828 million. An RFA for the town was carried out (See Figure)

Once the RFA was carried out, the industry realized that they were spending US $ 7 Million on buying water, 500,000 tonnes of firewood were being used and interestingly the study highlighted the fact that the calorific value of the solid waste (garbage) was high as it contained large quantities of textile and paper wastes. This could be used effectively to partially replace the firewood being consumed in the town.