Research on sustainability assessment of manufacturing processes and product design

政府和社会要求制造业减少其运营和产品对环境的影响。可持续制造过程提供了减少资源消耗和废物产生的潜力，同时保持经济和高效。目前的可持续发展研究主要集中在产品生命周期分析（LCA）上。然而，LCA是在产品制造之后执行的静态分析过程，此时环境影响已经产生。LCA工具通常尚未与其他设计分析和过程优化方法集成。LCA是一种单向可持续性分析工具。没有物料流的闭环来支持产品（再）设计或（再）制造的物料再利用。对于中小型企业（SMEs）， LCA工具是非常昂贵和知识密集型的。这一成本阻碍了中小企业获取其产品可持续性数据的能力；它阻碍了中小企业进入潜在市场，如欧盟，它对产品的可持续性有非常苛刻的标准。为了补充产品生命周期，需要以动态方式评估制造过程和产品设计的可持续性的替代方法。拟议的研究将分类和确定与不同类型的制造过程相关的可持续性因素。将制定准确的指标，以衡量不同制造过程的可持续性，重点关注能源消耗、材料效率、报废回收效率和材料回收率。将开发动态测量方法，汇总来自车间的实时可持续性数据。在产品设计和制造过程中，将创建可持续性信息模型来跟踪关键因素的历史，并关联闭环物料流。我们会开发一个可持续产品设计的网上模拟及优化平台，为中小企提供易于使用的软件工具，以评估其制造过程的可持续性，并提供网上产品设计建议，以改善其产品的可持续性。

Manufacturing industries are mandated by governments and society to reduce the environmental impact of their operations and products. Sustainable manufacturing processes offer the potential to reduce resource consumption and waste generation while remaining economic and efficient. Current sustainability research mostly focuses on product Life Cycle Analysis (LCA). However, LCA is a static analysis process performed after a product is manufactured, by which time the environmental impacts have already been generated. LCA tools are typically not yet integrated with other design analysis and process optimization methods. Also, LCA is a one-direction sustainability analysis tool. There is no closed-loop for material flow to support material reuse for product (re-)design or for (re-)manufacturing. For Small to Medium Enterprises (SMEs), LCA tools are very expensive and knowledge-intensive. This cost hinders the ability of SMEs to acquire sustainability data about their products; it impedes SMEs to enter potential markets such as the European Union, which has very demanding standards for product sustainability. Alternative approaches are needed to assess the sustainability of manufacturing processes and product design in a dynamic manner in order to supplement product life cycle. The proposed research will categorize and identify sustainability factors associated with different types of manufacturing processes. Accurate metrics will be developed to measure the sustainability of different manufacturing processes with a focus on energy consumption, material efficiency, end-of-life recycle efficiency, and material recovery rate. Dynamic measurement methodologies will be developed to aggregate real-time sustainability data from the shop floor. Sustainability information models will be created to track the history of key factors and associate closed-loop material flow during product design and manufacturing processes. An online simulation and optimization platform for sustainable product design will be developed to provide SMEs with easily accessible software tools to assess the sustainability of their manufacturing processes, and to provide on-line product design suggestions to improve the sustainability of their product.