Modeling and simulation analysis types for sustainable manufacturing

Abstract

Sustainable manufacturing could be promoted by the effective use of Modeling and Simulation (M&S) applications. These applications can evaluate manufacturing operations in light of increasing legislation and awareness for environmental protection. They can help determine the operational policy and strategy, and evaluate day-to-day manufacturing decisions to comply with regulations and to improve a company's image. However, in order to accomplish these objectives, existing and future simulation applications need to be enhanced to include sustainability constructs. This paper describes a classification of M&S application areas along functionality and data requirements axes that are necessary to achieve sustainable manufacturing objectives. The classification can in turn be used to perform requirements analyses for those applications and develop data repositories necessary to build and execute the simulation models.