A sustainable society cannot be realised without more efficient approaches and technologies which must in part be provided by manufacturing. Available literature covers the principles for making manufacturing more sustainable, but there is little, if any, practical guidance to show how to apply these principles. Lower level guidelines are required to provide guidance on systematically analysing manufacturing facilities and to assist with the identification and selection of improvement opportunities. This paper reports on work to develop guidelines for Material, Energy and Waste (MEW) process flow modelling to support the pursuit of sustainable manufacturing. Using qualitative MEW process flow maps of a case facility, data was collected to build a spreadsheet model aligned to each of the MEW process flows. The quantitative analysis provided detailed insight into the MEW process flows within the system and assisted with the identification and selection of environmental efficiency improvements. The key learning points from conducting the analysis generated a set of guidelines to aid the analysis of manufacturing systems, using MEW process flow modelling. This paper documents the approach developed and the environmental performance improvement opportunities identified in the case facility.
Understanding the role of labour, underplayed in Global Production Networks (GPN) theory, has guided this research on the mining engineering services sector. During our project, the global mining industry entered a downturn. Asking how mining and engineering firms responded to the downturn is a specific variant of wider questions about the place of labour in GPNs and whether labour can shape the GPNs of which it is part. Based on interviews with union officials, workers and management in Australia, we show that cost-cutting by global mining companies impacted heavily on the mining engineering sector, pressuring global and local firms. Labourbe it the work process or workers themselveswas central to how firms reacted. The agency of workers and their union was deeply constrained because of the power of companies in GPNs and the nature of the national state and local economies, areas in need of further theoretical development.Typically, labour relations scholars have not much engaged with global production network (GPN) analysis, nor has the otherwise fertile body of work around supply chains and GPNs paid much attention to labour, be it as object or subject (see Coe and Yeung, 2015 for a comprehensive statement). We accept that GPN analysis is a significant conceptual 3 development building on the typically more linear supply chain theories and important but largely 'labour free' global value chain analysis and argue that GPN analysis is critical for understanding the nature of work and employment relations. More than this though, we set out to examine labour's role in GPNs.To begin to answer the call which Coe and Yeung, among others, have made for empirical accounts of labour in GPNs, our research project asked how employment relations in the mining engineering services sector in Australia were shaped and, more specifically, what role labour, as subject and object, played in these GPNs. Not only can GPN analysis shed light on these questions but a focus on local accounts of employment relations builds a fuller explanation of the nature of the global relationships in these and other sectors. We suggest that, in globalised sectors, labour, national regulation and regional economies are integral to the nature of GPNs.To take these steps in deepening GPN theory, we begin by explaining the importance of, and gaps in, GPN analysis before moving to what is a rich empirical context for such an investigation, the global mining industry and its local engineering suppliers in Australia. Production Networks and LabourIn seeking to understand global supply chains and the social relations of work, scholars have developed a series of related but distinct frameworks, from Global Commodity Chains (GCCs) to Global Value Chains (GVCs) and now GPNs, which, their proponents suggest, are the most comprehensive of approaches to explaining global economic development. The fullest, most recent account of the GPN approach is Coe and Yeung's theorisation where they define a GPN 'as an organizational arrangement, comprising interconnected e...
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