Product low‐carbon design, manufacturing, logistics, and recycling: An overview

Abstract

Due to the worsening world climate crisis, reducing carbon emissions throughout product operations has become an issue that the manufacturing industry must face. In order to gain competitive advantage, this paper aims to explore low carbon design techniques for product life cycle: including low carbon design, low carbon manufacturing, low carbon logistics and low carbon recycling, as they are highly relevant to reducing carbon emissions. This paper proposes a portfolio structure for low carbon operations, consisting of a target layer, a strategy layer, and a support layer, aimed at improving energy efficiency and reducing carbon emissions. To emphasize the maximization of economic, environmental, and social advantages, the objective layer establishes a system of goals for low‐carbon product design. The strategy layer proposes four low‐carbon product design technologies: low‐carbon product design, manufacturing, transportation, and recycling. The support layer emphasizes the importance of operational systems and support platforms for low‐carbon products, such as low‐carbon design systems, energy information collection systems, energy optimization support systems, carbon emission monitoring and control systems, and low‐carbon management systems. However, successful implementation of low carbon manufacturing is challenging due to the complexity of low carbon manufacturing and the uniqueness of each company. Therefore, this paper suggests applying a life‐cycle‐oriented low‐carbon operation model to various manufacturing enterprises and exploring models that reflect actual manufacturing practices to achieve the goal of low‐carbon manufacturing.