An Approach to Sustainable Metrics Definition and Evaluation for Green Manufacturing in Material Removal Processes

Abstract

Material removal technologies should be thoroughly analyzed not only to optimize operations but also to minimize the different waste emissions and obtain cleaner production centers. The study of environmental sustainability in manufacturing processes, which is rapidly gaining importance, requires activity modeling with material and resource inputs and outputs and, most importantly, the definition of a balanced scorecard with suitable indicators for different levels, including the operational level. This paper proposes a metrics deployment approach for the different stages of the product life cycle, including a conceptual framework of high-level indicators and the definition of machining process indicators from different perspectives. This set of metrics enables methodological measurement and analysis and integrates the results into aggregated indicators that can be considered for continuous improvement strategies. This approach was validated by five case studies of experimental testing of the sustainability indicators in material removal operations. The results helped to confirm or modify the approach and to adjust the parameter definitions to optimize the initial sustainability objectives.

A Novel Approach to Evaluating Sustainability of Products and Associated Manufacturing Processes

“…There are other studies [11,12,13] that have developed metrics to evaluate sustainability of manufacturing processes, but they are not holistic as they either do not consider all stages of product manufacturing and disposal or do not fully incorporate important indicators pertaining to social and environmental pillars of sustainability. For instance, indicators pertaining to social pillar such as operational safety and personnel health during manufacturing phase of a product is considered by [11] but similar indicators also need to be considered for other phases of a product's cradle-to-grace life span, for example, during raw material extraction phase.…”

“…For instance, indicators pertaining to social pillar such as operational safety and personnel health during manufacturing phase of a product is considered by [11] but similar indicators also need to be considered for other phases of a product's cradle-to-grace life span, for example, during raw material extraction phase. Likewise, important indicators such as greenhouse gases emissions, local level pollution and labour exploitations are not considered by [12,13].…”

Identification of the Right Environmental KPIs for Manufacturing Operations: Towards a Continuous Sustainability Framework

“…Therefore, developing sustainable approaches for manufacturing companies has been regarded as a vital global affair [ 33 ]. Sustainability has been incorporated into manufacturing management aspects such as process optimisation [ 34 ], product development [ 35 , 36 ], supply chain management [ 37 , 38 ], lean manufacturing [ 39 ], and supplier evaluation and selection [ 40 ]. But none of them focuses exclusively on appraising environmental manufacturing performance [ 41 ].…”

Special Issue of the Manufacturing Engineering Society 2019 (SIMES-2019)

“…In this Special Issue of the journal Materials, 29 contributions to cutting-edge advances in different fields of the manufacturing engineering have been collected. In particular, in additive manufacturing and 3D printing [4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11]; sustainable and green manufacturing [12][13][14][15][16]; metrology and quality in manufacturing [17][18][19][20][21]; advances and innovations in manufacturing processes [22][23][24][25]; manufacturing of new materials [26][27][28]; design, modeling, and simulation in manufacturing engineering [29,30] industry 4.0 [31] and manufacturing engineering and society [32]. Among all of them, the topic additive manufacturing and 3D printing stands out for the number of contributions it has had in this Special Issue showing the interest that this topic arouses, currently, among researchers, the industry and the public in general.…”

“…The first one gathers four works about new sustainable lubrication/cooling techniques used in removal processes [12][13][14][15] and the other about reusing waste in ecological cement [16]. The second one collects research about the optimization of laser tracker location on verification process [17], estimation of an upper bound to the value of the step potentials from grounding resistance measurements [18], enhanced positioning algorithm by mesh elements, recalculation and angle error orientation [19], industrial calibration procedure for confocal microscopes [20] and, finally, the development and validation of a calibration gauge for length measurement systems [21]. The Special Issue also collects four pieces of work in the topic advances and innovations in manufacturing processes.…”