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In terms of manufacturing processes and systems, decision-makers may encounter difficulty in making environmentally friendly choices. This difficulty arises largely because of the nascency of environmentally responsible manufacturing. There is a sparsity of environmental information on processes and a variety of seemingly unconnected tools, methods, concepts, etc. To help decisions-makers understand the nature of a process and identify the appropriate tools/methods that may be most suited to reducing environmental impact, a classification system for manufacturing processes is established. Methods and tools for environmentally responsible manufacturing are then identified for each class. Two examples are presented to show how the new classification system may be applied in environmentally responsible manufacturing.

As the pool of existing non-renewable natural resources continues to shrink, it will be necessary for government and industrial leaders to achieve a workable strategy for the intelligent allocation of scarce resources. In this paper, a method of quantifying the environmental and resource impacts of product redesign is proposed. This new method utilizes Input Output Analysis coupled with the Markovian decision making into a single matrix-based tool. The benefit of a fully developed tool would be the ability to make informed pre-production decisions leading to optimum product and process designs with minimal environmental impact. This paper illustrates this technique with an example based upon real industry data and extrapolated effects.