A holistic approach for achieving Sustainable manufacturing using Zero Defect Manufacturing: a conceptual Framework

Abstract

Over the years, the manufacturing industry has seen constant growth and change. On one level, it has been affected by the fourth industrial revolution (Industry 4.0). On another, it has had to enhance its ability to meet higher customer expectations, such as more customized products at a faster rate. These factors have led many manufacturing companies to produce new products quicker than ever for two main reasons: to achieve higher profits and to meet the increasing demand from their customers. This phenomenon has imposed new rules on product manufacture, such as shorter production time and smaller batch output, making strategies, which had been successfully used in the past, obsolete or less efficient. Furthermore, to embrace agility and deliver a rich portfolio of services to the industrial sector, industrial automation based on digital connectedness will challenge the traditional digital boundaries among industrial systems. The flow of data created and collected by various actors in the manufacturing value chain will have to break these barriers in order to allow for the full-scale digital collaboration among production entities, ensuring at the same time multi-layer optimization. Additionally, sustainable manufacturing with zero defects and zero waste is one of the top priorities of manufacturers these days. A key approach for achieving sustainable manufacturing is called Zero Defect manufacturing (ZDM), therefore the current article proposes a holistic framework which is identifying all the critical components of a manufacturing company that needs to be integrated together in order to achieve sustainable manufacturing utilizing ZDM. The core of the proposed framework are data and data driven technologies that can increase the sustainability of a manufacturing system. The proposed framework would represent exactly what Industry 4.0 paradigm imposes.