A Software Tool for Unit Process-Based Sustainable Manufacturing Assessment of Metal Components and Assemblies

Abstract

While environmental impact analysis is standard in accordance with ISO 14040:2006 using life cycle assessment software, such as GaBi and SimaPro, software tools supporting broader sustainability assessment are limited. Recent research has developed methods for sustainable manufacturing assessment and has led to unit manufacturing process models that can be used to quantify sustainability metrics. In spite of these advances, engineering designers must apply such methods in an ad hoc manner, which increases engineering analysis time and limits the utility of sustainability assessment in early design. Thus, manufacturing process models and supporting software tool are developed to assist design for manufacturing efforts pursuing sustainability performance improvement. The software is constructed using Visual Basic to create a graphical user interface for an MS Excel calculation engine. Using unit manufacturing process models, a product sustainability assessment can be generated by chaining together a sequential manufacturing process flow. In this way, cradle-to-gate assessments can support decisions made during product, process, and supply chain design. The method combines upstream inventory analysis and in-house unit process modeling to perform cradle-to-gate sustainability assessment. The utility of the approach is demonstrated for the assessment of an aircraft-like metal product assembly.