Competitive and sustainable manufacturing by means of ultra-efficient factories in urban surroundings

Abstract

The rapid growth of the world population, the finiteness of resources on our planet Earth and the ongoing tendency towards urbanisation result in the need to question our actions and economic activities, also for industrial enterprises. A paradigm shift to decouple growth and resource utilisation is needed. By means of ultra-efficiency, factories are targeted, whose positive impact to their surrounding is optimised instead of only minimising negative influences. In the contribution, the concept of ultra-efficient factories and first tools for their implementation are introduced. Therefore, the term ultra-efficient factory is defined based on the state of the art. On this definition, spheres of activity for ultra-efficient factories under consideration of urban surroundings are determined. For the spheres of activity, criteria to assess the according maturity of companies are identified and aggregated into a comprehensive maturity model. The maturity model enables the determination of potentials for advancements of companies. To support the industrial application of the theoretic work, industrial best practices are determined and a visual tool is developed

The Impact of Resource Efficiency Actions on Firm Performance, Moderating Role of Eco-Investment and Production Cost

“…As a matter of fact, the world has been enjoying the utilization of resource for many decades and this utilization went beyond the expectations with the globalization and a drastic increase in world population. Lentes et al (2017) elaborated that the recent research studies illustrated the trends for the coming years. It is said that the population of entire world will increase 2.3 billion by 2050, so the resource utilization will also increase by 2.3 times (WWF, Global Footprint Network & ZSL Living Conservation 2012).…”

“…These studies created the need to limit the growth (Meadows et al, 1972), to rethink the way of living and doing any business (Lentes et al, 2017). So, the producers of different industrial activities need to justify the production processes so that the resources are to be utilized as efficiently as possible.…”

“…In preceding couple of decades, the world economy increased into double and it also doubled the use of resources. Lentes et al (2017) argued that the suitability of resource utilization created the need to determine the manufacturing actions. Other multiple factors, for instance, overall growth, firm's profitability, employee's retention, customer satisfaction, social and environmental performance are some other related factors which are also utilized to be associated with the firm performance to find out the financial performance (Llopis & Blasco, 2018).…”

Economic and environmental packaging sustainability: A case study

“…A foremost intersection point between environmental and economic factors is the reverse flow in the supply chain, where packaging has a very important role (García-Arca et al, 2014;Lentes, Mandel, Schliessmann, Blach, Hertwig & Kuhlmann, 2017;White, Wang & Li, 2015). Consequently, many studies on sustainability have established comparisons among returnable and disposable packaging items (Albrecht et al, 2013;Atamer, Bakal & Bayindir, 2013;Goudenege, Chu & Jemai, 2013).…”

Method for Development of Sustainable Relations of Manufacturing Companies in Industrial Estates

“…Within the project a generic model has been developed which can be used as base. The model was created by using aspects of different models towards sustainable development in manufacturing processes, as provided by the research group of Kibiri [10] and the Fraunhofer team [11]. However, the model as partly stated in Figure 6 needs to be adapted to the companies and the conditions of the industrial estate.…”