Search Results

The National Science Foundation recently sponsored a Workshop on Environmentally Benign Manufacturing (EBM) for the Transportation Industries. The objective of the workshop was to determine future directions of research in the EBM area and to construct a roadmap for development of future research programs. While research in the fields of Design for the Environment (DfE) and Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) have focused on the product and product life cycles, an additional focus is needed to find and develop processes with less environmental impact within the manufacturing environment. This workshop explored EBM issues with respect to the enterprise, the products, the processes and the materials.

This is a report of a workshop held in mid-August of 2002 at Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, to explore what it takes to make a decision regarding environmental systems in the US. The participants in the workshop represented federal government, industry, non-governmental organizations and academia. During the two and a half day workshop, discussions were held on the policy drivers, the strategies and tactics (through a SWOT analysis), the decisions the automotive industry is facing today and the tools available to support decision making.

The framework for environmentally conscious manufacturing in industry is the life cycle assessment structure developed by the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry and incorporated into ISO 14000 Environmental Management Systems. Plant managers subject to this standard have the responsibility for environmental improvement projects. Often, applying these projects creates significant risks, particularly if the project is unsuccessful or requires a new technology that has not been widely applied. Plant managers are inherently risk adverse. Thus plant managers need to know not only how a project will succeed but also what could happen if the project fails or results in a state different than intended. Based on that knowledge, plants managers prepare contingency plans. This paper illustrates a method by which the optimum plan and all possible contingency plans can be selected based upon minimizing project cost while maximizing project success to arrive at an improvement goal.

A pilot model using Simulink™ of three interlinked industrial sectors leading to painted automotive bodies was constructed for the purpose of observing time based effects on an Life Cycle Analysis (LCA). Current LCA neglects time under an implicit assumption that material inventory data is steady state. In this study, process models were built which included time as a parameter in addition to LCA material inventory data. The results show that time is a critical factor in the overall material inventory. If the transient behavior due to demand or regulatory control results in an industry instability, material supplies may be interrupted or overproduced depending on the timing and strength of the control. Furthermore, potentially greater inventories of undesirable materials could occur. These effects are not currently captured by LCA Inventory Analysis procedures. However, this paper shows that use of dynamic modeling can correct this situation.

The drive of Design for the Environment is to reduce the environmental impact of both design and manufacturing processes. The most frequent method recommended is to substitute better materials and processes. However, there are processes that will continue to have undesirable environmental impacts due to the lack of knowledge of better methods. These processes are critical to manufacturing of products and can not be eliminated. All possible substitutions appear to have worse impacts. This paper explores modeling these processes and imposing a control method which permits an improvement of the environmental impact.