Green Manufacturing

This chapter has as its objective a basic introduction to the topic to set the stage for the rest of the book. It introduces first the importance of this topic now and then the motivation, basics, and definitions associated with green manufacturing and sustainability. It describes some of the drivers that are causing governments and industry to take steps to green their processes, machines, systems, and enterprises. A discussion about the distinction between green and sustainable is introduced with respect to incremental improvements, greening and achieving overall sustainability. Strategies for achieving green manufacturing are presented. Barriers and obstacles to greening manufacturing are presented along with examples from industrial practice.

The chapter introduces readers to the pressure for change, the themes of the transitions taking place, and the steps suggested for moving forward in the social, economic, and policy environment in which green manufacturing resides. The concept of sustainability related to manufacturing with an emphasis on the metrics, standards, and best practices associated with instituting green manufacturing on the path to sustainability is defined. The drivers for change and progress and the difficulties, hurdles, and benefits associated with transitioning to green operations are discussed.

This chapter looks at metrics for green manufacturing and sustainability. Relevant economic metrics are reviewed and for complete coverage of sustainability issues, social metrics are also surveyed. The challenges of quantitatively evaluating social concerns are illustrated by highlighting the multiple considerations that social metrics attempt to capture. The chapter then survey metrics that tie in multiple considerations, pulling together ecological, social, and economic metrics. To inform metrics development, methods for inventory and impact assessment are also reviewed. Finally, the chapter presents several approaches for metric development, which systematically build up the metric based on considerations of goal, scope, system boundary, planning horizon, and system drivers.

This chapter discusses the background, characteristics, and requirements/constraints of supply chains. A major focus is how they have been developing towards more green performance. Several case studies are given documenting the activities of companies that have taken leadership in green supply chain, material reuse, and recycling. Problems associated with implementing green supply chains are discussed.

The purpose of this chapter is to illuminate some of the basic principles of green manufacturing. That is, establish a framework of principles against which relevant examples can then be mapped to determine how green a system or solution is and find areas for potential improvements. This forms the structure of the discussion in following chapters where specific manufacturing processes or systems are investigated in more detail. We propose the following five principles: (1) a comprehensive systems approach must be used to evaluate and improve manufacturing processes from a green perspective, (2) the system should be wholly viewed across both the vertical and horizontal directions, (3) harmful inputs and outputs of the system to the environment and humans should be reduced or removed, (4) net resource use should be lowered, and (5) temporal effects on the system should always be considered. These are discussed in detail.

This chapter discusses the closed-loop aspects of production systems in the context of green and sustainable manufacturing. Specifically, we consider the life cycle of production systems from design and construction through use, decommissioning, and recycling or repurposing. We discuss resource and economic efficiency and present a series of examples of life cycle analysis of manufacturing systems. We also describe how to design systems for reduced life cycle impact. Examples include comparisons of different machine tool systems, process parameter optimization, consumable utilization, plant services, and plant design.

Semiconductor manufacturing, one of the fields of manufacturing in which the USA has played a dominant role for decades, is seen as a major consumer of resources and a source of environmental impact. The objective of this chapter is to introduce the basics of semiconductor manufacturing and, then, look at a detailed analysis of the energy and global warming impact of manufacturing one typical semiconductor product, the complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) chip. Process steps are reviewed, materials, consumables, and waste streams described, and then an example of applying life-cycle analysis to CMOS fabrication and use (including materials processing through transportation and use phases) is presented. The level of data detail required is illustrated along with trends in manufacturing and environmental impact over several technology nodes.

Green manufacturing for nanotechnologies must be considered, while it is most impactful to do so, during early development and early application stage. There are still a lot of challenges in applying conventional green theories and methodologies to nano-manufacturing technologies, particularly for their overall sustainability assessment and improvement. This chapter provides a basic overview of potential environmental impacts associated with nanotechnology and its manufacturing processes. The fundamental knowledge and scientific methods useful in understanding the environmental impacts of nanotechnology from a holistic view are discussed. A few examples on environmental studies of nano-manufacturing technologies are provided as well. A systematic view of the potential environmental impacts of nano-manufacturing will be helpful for guiding future research in this subject.

This chapter focuses on introducing the application of clean energy supply for conventional manufacturing systems to reduce energy-related environmental emissions. Three candidate energy sources, solar photovoltaic (PV), wind, and fuel cell stationary power systems are briefly introduced. The chapter then discusses the working principles and characteristics of these three clean energy technologies, the application potential of each system assessed using quantitative methods, and an example of the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from a global automotive manufacturing system.

In the interest of sustainability, many manufacturers have taken steps to analyze the key components of their products and processes across the span of their supply chain. Product packaging—which is an especially pervasive component, spanning across the supply chain of nearly all products—has garnered particular interest in discussions of sustainability. Packaging is not only associated with its own sourcing impacts but also influences the impacts of the product, especially in terms of the shipping impacts of the product. Several organizations have developed tools and guidelines to help manufacturers make greener packaging choices in terms of packaging. Pallet utilization is one practice for improving packaging that has been put forth in these publications and is one of the few practices that consider the impacts of packaging, not only in the context of its own supply chain but also as a component of a product. This study discusses the practice of pallet utilization and identifies the cases in which it would serve as potentially beneficial. These considerations are currently lacking in the recommendations for the adoption of pallet utilization. In addition, an overview of the current methodologies used to evaluate the environmental impacts of transportation and to optimize the distribution of the product is provided.

This chapter reviews various technologies applicable in characterizing the resource utilization of manufacturing processes. A review of sensors to measure and quantitatively characterize the various flows involved in manufacturing processes and machines is first presented. Given the complexity of managing and parsing the sensor data, software tools are needed to automate data monitoring and the chapter presents a framework based on event stream processing to temporally analyze the energy consumption and operational data of machine tools and other manufacturing equipment. Finally, a case study that focuses on energy measurements and demonstrates the use of energy monitoring in reasoning over the performance of a manufacturing system is presented.

This chapter first looks at the principal developments in manufacturing over the last several hundred years and where this is leading in the future. The role of sustainable manufacturing, and requirements to actually enable this, is discussed. Then, some discussion of “what is manufacturing’s role” relative to the life cycle impact and resource consumption of products is presented. Depending on what phase of product represents the most impact will determine the strategies for greening the product. Finally, the concept of “leveraging” manufacturing to insure the maximum improvement in product life cycle impact is introduced.