Concept Of Sustainable Manufacturing Research Articles

An Assessment of Sustainability for Turning Process in an Automobile Firm

The concept of Sustainable Manufacturing (SM) has emerged out as a key alternative to improving the performance of machining processes. Though there are many descriptive frameworks available in the literature to assess sustainability still, they are difficult to implement in manufacturing industries due to the limitation on quantifying certain parameters. This paper tends to present a sustainability assessment framework for turning process with respect to the manufactured product in the case industry from the economic and environmental point of view using empirical relations after conducting the experiments at full tool wear criteria. The results are expected to provide an understanding to the industry professionals on the difference between three machining scenario's concurrent to operating conditions being followed in the industry by giving more weightage to economic and environmental indicators separately. In addition to this, a social sustainability assessment framework has also been proposed after consultation with few manufacturing industries in order to make it easy for them to adapt and enhance the sustainability of machining process.

Enhancement of Productivity of Traditional Brass Manufacturing Industry Using Sustainable Manufacturing Concept

The Sri Lankan Brass manufacturing industry has evolved through centuries. Since then, this industry has been operated as family business, there are many gaps compared to modern manufacturing industries. Hence it faces sever threats from different aspects including escalation of raw material prices, proper reverse logistic mechanism to collect scarp brass material, lack of competencies to adapt new technology. This research is carried out to investigate the adaptation of appropriate technology to replace traditional sand casting process and manual sheet metal carving process. As a secondary measure, a methodology is developed to introduce appropriate technology to marginalized community as University - Industry partnership. This is paramount important since they do not have required level of technical competencies to use CAD, CAM. Outcomes reveal that there are number of productivity enhancements in terms of product quality, material efficiency and process standardization.

Sustainable Manufacturing based Decision Support Model for Product Design and Development Process

Sustainable manufacturing is creation of manufactured products through economically-sound processes that minimize negative environmental impacts while conserving energy and natural resources. Sustainable manufacturing also enhances employee, community, and product safety. In order to adapt sustainable Manufacturing concepts, it is essential to plan and decide from a product design and development stage as it has been revealed that 80% of sustainability impacts from the product are decided in the product design and development stage. In modern day Products Design and manufacturing it is always advantages to have complete knowledge of the Life Cycle of the Product. If Life cycle information is available for the designers, it will be easy for them to take many decisions related to specially the environmental performance or eco efficiency which is one of the emerging marketing tools. Further, with the full knowledge of the product life cycle, new/existing products can be designed/redesigned based on eco-design principals or environmentally friendly manner, thereby to improve the material and energy efficiency during the manufacturing and user phases and finally will have better environmental performances. The product life cycle and Eco design are two key techniques used in Sustainable Manufacturing specially these will enable to convert any existing product or process to be competitive in the market by better environmental performances and quality while minimizing manufacturing cost beside with better environmental performances. These issues prevail mainly since there is no such systematic approach towards Product Design and Development among the many manufacturers. Since Sustainable Manufacturing Concept applicable for all major phases of the product Life cycle, it is essential to co-relate life cycle assessment outcomes with product design and development process. However, there are numerous decisions needed to take into account at different stages of product design and development process. Therefore, in this research, a decision support model is developed based on LCA and Eco Design concepts. The developed model has been validated with few existing product decision and development processes. The results shows that significant number of issues and potential improvements to the existing design and development processes can be taken from the proposed model and that will leads to many sustainability options to the whole product life cycle than what is persist presently.

Sustainable manufacturing: a critical discipline for the twenty-first century

Purpose – This paper aims to provide an introduction to sustainable manufacturing concepts and practices. Design/methodology/approach – Following an introduction to sustainable manufacturing, this article first considers various government programmes and information sources. It then discusses life cycle assessment (LCA) techniques and standards and certain product design issues. The benefits of sustainable manufacturing concepts are then identified, together with some examples of applications. Finally, brief conclusions are drawn. Findings – Sustainable manufacturing involves a multitude of practices which seek to minimise the impact of a product or process on the environment. It encompasses the entire product cycle from “cradle to grave” and many standards and techniques have been developed to assist in its implementation, including LCA. In addition to meeting growing consumer demands for “greener” products, sustainable manufacturing can yield operational and financial benefits, including reduced material use, improved designs, lower energy consumption and reduced waste and scrap levels. Originality/value – This article provides a timely review of sustainable manufacturing principles, practices and benefits.

Reconfiguring machines to achieve system adaptability and sustainability: A practical case study

The fierce competition in the global manufacturing environment is forcing enterprises to seek competitiveness beyond traditional aspects such as functions, quality, cost, and lead time. An emerging strategy is to develop sustainable manufacturing systems. An ideal sustainable system has the characteristics of remanufacturing, redesigning, recovering, reusing, recycling, and reducing. However, this type of sustainability mainly refers to the products rather than to the manufacturing system itself. When the design and operation of a manufacturing system are concerned, the criterion of sustainability often conflicts with other requirements such as cost and lead time. Instead of establishing a total new system paradigm, it is more realistic that the concept of sustainable manufacturing is used as a guidance to evolve existing systems to an advanced level. In this article, a case study is introduced to recycle an obsolete test machine to meet new functional requirements; it has shown a significant economic benefit. The presented case study provides a new perspective of economically evolving dedicated machines or manufacturing systems into sustainable systems.

Industrial ecology at factory level: a prototype methodology

The concept of sustainable manufacturing is a form of pollution prevention that integrates environmental considerations in the production of goods while focusing on efficient resource use. Taking the industrial ecology perspective, this efficiency comes from improved resource flow management. The assessment of material, energy and waste resource flows, therefore, offers a route to viewing and analysing a manufacturing system as an ecosystem using industrial ecology biological analogy and can, in turn, support the identification of improvement opportunities in the material, energy and waste flows. This application of industrial ecology at factory level is absent from the literature. This article provides a prototype methodology to apply the concepts of industrial ecology using material, energy and waste process flows to address this gap in the literature. Various modelling techniques were reviewed and candidates selected to test the prototype methodology in an industrial case. The application of the prototype methodology showed the possibility of using the material, energy and waste resource flows through the factory to link manufacturing operations and supporting facilities, and to identify potential improvements in resource use. The outcomes of the work provide a basis to build the specifications for a modelling tool that can support those analysing their manufacturing system to improve their environmental performance and move towards sustainable manufacturing.

Sustainable manufacturing: trends and research challenges

Sustainability is and will be a crucial issue for the present and future generations. The current assumption that natural resources are infinite and that the regenerative capacity of the environment is able to compensate for all human action is no longer acceptable. Hence, sustainability issues will influence all organisational aspects of the human life, from the economical, political, social and environmental points of view. The reason is simple: until now, all human activities have been based on the paradigm of unlimited resources and unlimited world's capacity for regeneration; from now on, the awareness of the termination of this assumption means that all related behavioural models must be changed. This is a very impressive objective embracing all fields of culture, economy, technology and much more. A continuing effort, together with a reasonable time span, will be required to pursue this goal. Fortunately, nature and the environment are capable of self-regulation and will give man a chance to recover from the damage he is causing to the earth mother, provided that the will to do so is firmly established. Manufacturing, as the main pillar of the civilised lifestyle, will be strongly affected by the sustainability issues and it will play an important role in establishing a sustainable way ahead. Today, nearly all manufacturing models are based on the old paradigm. Technology, on which the manufacturing is largely based, is asked, together with culture and economy, to give the tools and options for building new solutions towards a sustainable manufacturing concept. Generally speaking, new technology, new business models and new lifestyle models will be the cornerstones of the new sustainable world and this will be particularly true for what concerns the manufacturing sector. Impressive constraints and requirements will affect the industrial sector on the way ahead towards sustainability. Research and development will play a crucial role to this concern, having the responsibility to offer appropriate options to the society for answering the above-mentioned needs. The main evidences on researches challenges expected for sustainable manufacturing are outlined by the authors that have been involved in the IMS international project ‘IMS2020: Supporting Global Research for IMS2020 Vision’, promoted by the European Commission to prepare a roadmap for future (2020) manufacturing research.

The Adoption of Sustainable Manufacturing Practices in the Caribbean

ABSTRACTThe Caribbean region is awakening to the reality that environmental sustainability is fast becoming a major business performance dimension that is shaping the competitive landscape for manufacturers. This research attempts to gain a picture of the current level of emphasis on environmental sustainability among manufacturers in five Caribbean countries. This paper reports on the level of awareness of the concept of sustainable manufacturing, the sustainability practices Caribbean manufacturers are currently engaged in, and the barriers preventing the adoption of sustainability practices. The findings from our survey show that the majority of Caribbean manufacturers have little knowledge of the concept of sustainable manufacturing and the adoption of sustainability practices is low. In light of these findings, the paper discusses potential roles for Caribbean governments, manufacturing associations, and educational institutions in addressing the need for greater emphasis on sustainable manufacturing in the region. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.