Abstract
The eco-efficiency of actual production processes is still one dominating research area in engineering. However, neglecting the environmental impacts of production equipment, technical building services and energy supply might lead to sub-optimization or burden-shifting and thus reduced effectiveness. As an established method used in sustainability management, Life Cycle Assessment aims at calculating the environmental impacts from all life cycle stages of a product or system. In order to cope with shortcomings of the static character of life cycle models and data gaps this approach combines Life Cycle Assessment with manufacturing system simulation. Therefore, the two life cycles of product and production system are merged to assess environmental sustainability on product level. Manufacturing simulation covers the production system and Life Cycle Assessment is needed to relate the results to the final product. This combined approach highlights the influences from dynamic effects in manufacturing systems on resulting life cycle impact from both product and production system. Furthermore, the importance of considering indirect peripheral equipment and its effects on the manufacturing system operation in terms of output and energy demands is underlined. The environmental flows are converted into impacts for the five recommended environmental impact categories. Thus, it can be demonstrate that Life Cycle Assessment can enhance the process simulation and help identify hot-spots along the life cycle. The combined methodology is applied for analysing a case study in fourteen scenarios for the integration of volatile energy sources into energy flexible manufacturing control.
Highlights
Introduction and MotivationManufacturing plays an important role in the global economic development but it contributes to a large share of environmental pollution and affects the human health
The common approach improves the information value compared to stand-alone manufacturing system simulation and life cycle assessment (LCA)
This leads to the conclusion that an upfront basic test might be beneficial to indicate if more detailed modelling is required
Summary
Introduction and MotivationManufacturing plays an important role in the global economic development but it contributes to a large share of environmental pollution and affects the human health. Producing companies are subject to increasing pressure from legislation and customers to improve their own activities towards more sustainable manufacturing This requires production engineers, factory planners and product designers to identify improvement measures for existing manufacturing systems as well as innovative concepts for new facilities. Suitable methods and tools for the evaluation of different measures and concepts are required in order to identify feasible measures reducing the energy and resource consumption in manufacturing systems. These methods and tools have to consider the entire life cycle of a manufacturing system including environmental impacts related to production (e.g. construction of a factory building and production of machines) and end-of-life
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