Modern enterprises of all sizes operate in global manufacturing networks and complex global supply chains. Because sustainability is now a major concern, global manufacturing enterprises must optimize their global supply chain over multiple objectives including sustainability. It is important for such enterprises to analyze their global supply chain across all the three pillars of sustainability (society, economy and environment) when making a distribution network decision. A cradle-to-gate approach is taken, which means this decision can depend on the manufacturing site, all its suppliers, raw material source and transportation right until the customer gate. In this article, a multi-objective optimization model is presented that provides a rigorous method to optimize over all the three pillars of sustainability using a cradle-to-gate approach.
The increase of resource (energy and material) efficiency by eliminating unnecessary consumption represents the logical continuation from lean manufacturing to lean and green manufacturing. However, economic efficiency remains the primary decision criterion for the implementation of corresponding strategies. This paper presents a simulation based approach for monetary assessment of lean and green manufacturing systems considering non-monetary green limits. Inclusion of material and energy consumption as well as resulting greenhouse gas emissions enables planners to predict the overall economic performance of a factory. Furthermore, product variant specific footprints of material and energy demands as well as resulting emissions support in-depth analysis of value streams in manufacturing.
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