Engineering Driven Sustainable Supply Networks - A UK/India Collaborative Study

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This is a UK & India Advanced Manufacturing Research Challenges proposal seeking to investigate engineering driven sustainable supply networks in four industries of national importance, Aerospace, Automotive, Pharmaceutical and Food Processing (IfM and TSB 2012, National Manufacturing Policy, India 2011). This research seeks to extend existing supply network configuration theories by integrating sustainability dimensions to the traditional cost, quality, and timely and dependable delivery analysis.The design of supply networks is traditionally driven by operational drivers of cost, quality, and timely and dependable supply. However, sustainability considerations in network design are now becoming increasingly critical and this project seeks to integrate capabilities in the simulation and modelling of operations (Indian Institute of Technology Ropar and Indian Institute of Management Lucknow) and industrial supply network design (University of Cambridge Institute for Manufacturing) toward the development of a new capability in the engineering driven design of sustainable supply networks.The key research question which the proposal tries to address is "How to design more sustainable supply networks for manufacturing organisations?" The project will seek to develop methodologies that support optimal usage of key resources like energy, materials, water and other inputs, while minimising the generation of waste. Methods will support trade-off analysis between sustainability practices, whilst simultaneously meeting the cost, quality and responsiveness related requirements. The unit of analysis will be specific product categories in both discrete (automotive and aerospace and process (pharmaceuticals, food processing) industries located in the UK and India.