Integrated Environmental and Economic Performance Monitoring

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This grant provides funding for research to integrate environmental and economic performance information for manufacturers. This research will attempt to help industry see, in real time, opportunities for improving both economic and environmental performance. The objective is to develop new business/process instrumentation and corresponding methods of analysis that will quantify and qualify the joint environmental and economic performance of manufacturing plants. This project will extend familiar cost management principles (in particular Activity-Based Costing) into environmental management in order to create a combined economic and environmental performance measurement framework. A model of a manufacturing plant's processes using an Activity-Based Cost, Mass, and Energy approach will be developed. Manufacturing process sensors will be used to enhance response time of performance measurements. The data streams will be integrated into a web-browser based display that provides read-outs of the plant's performance at various levels of detail. The tools will be implemented and tested in an actual manufacturing plant. This test-bed will be used to assess the findings and lessons learned with respect to developing integrated economic and environmental assessments.If successful, this research will provide new business and process instrumentation and corresponding methods of analysis that will quantify and qualify the joint environmental and economic performance of manufacturing plants. These tools will advance the cause of environmentally conscious manufacturing (and ultimately, sustainable development) by providing a basis for benchmarking a manufacturing plant with other plants and other industries. Companies will use these methods to accelerate their contributions to a more sustainable society.