Procedia CIRP最新文献

With growing concerns around climate change, the railway sector is committed to improving the circularity and reducing the emissions of its products and services. In this exploratory case study, fourteen European railway partners, including suppliers, operators and infrastructure managers, are collectively working on energy and eco-labelling initiatives to continue these improvements and communicate their progress. Such labels can be used to collect and share the most relevant pieces of information related to energy efficiency, material use, and environmental impact, which are often fragmented in the supply chain.

The case study includes a literature review combined with interviews to better understand the current state of European railway eco-labels and validate if they are an appropriate tool for the sector. It reveals the need for new or updated eco-labels for the railway sector that better suit their developing goals and requirements. This research outlines a set of recommendations for the development of future European railway eco-labels.

Five categories of goals were identified in the relevant literature, (i) the evaluation of the environmental impact of a product, (ii) the behavior-change of customers and (iii) the supply chain, (iv) the push for positive change and (v) the potential marketability of a product.

Digital solutions such as IoT, machine learning, big data, and simulation platforms are increasingly integrated into industrial practices but are not fully leveraged for enhancing circularity in the value chain. To address this, the Circular Digital Cockpit (CDC) framework is proposed to aid manufacturers and public authorities in transitioning towards circularity. The CDC is structured to analyze and improve organizational activities, incorporating Data Science, Digital Enterprise Architecture, and Circular Economy Strategies. It comprises two main parts. The first, "Measure, Understand, Prioritize", focuses on transforming lifecycle data into circularity indicators suitable for various organizational roles, like product and process managers. This helps in prioritizing improvement objectives both individually and organization-wide. The second part, “Act – Imagine, Simulate, Decide, Deploy –, Monitor”, guides each actor in developing and implementing actions aimed at circularity and sustainability goals. This involves assembling a global action plan and employing the Theory of Change methodology to assess and refine these actions based on their impact on circularity and sustainability. The CDC's adaptability and potential in enhancing circular practices across various industries and territorial levels are tested in diverse scenarios, including the remanufacturing of heavy vehicles, the maintenance of medical devices, and the management of bio-waste and construction waste.

High-speed laser directed energy deposition is an additive manufacturing process that offers great potential for industrial applications due to its high process speeds. To mitigate the climate crisis, it is important to consider the energy and material demand, as well as the resulting greenhouse gas emissions of products. However, for new and emerging technologies such as high-speed laser directed energy deposition, there is a lack of analysis regarding the environmental impact throughout the entire process chain. In order to analyze and exploit efficiency potentials at an early stage, it is necessary to assess the environmental impact of parts prior to production. Thus, this paper presents a methodology for developing a customized model that enable the prediction of the part-specific environmental impact. The methodology includes the entire process chain from raw material extraction, powder production, additive manufacturing, to post-processing. Through its three-level structure, which includes an information query, individual databases, and calculation models, this approach allows in-depth analysis of the environmental impact and its causal composition prior to production, thus enabling the identification and direct realization of potentials for the reducing environmental impact.

Sustainable development in the industrial sector has been widely explored in recent years, to achieve a carbon-neutral industry. Compressed air systems are widely used in the industrial sector. Numerous energy-saving improvements have been studied within this scope, as leaks make these systems inefficient. Nevertheless, it has yet to be seen how different optimisation techniques can be utilised to mitigate fault effects. This study shows how fault monitoring was performed on a multi-actuator system, using different time domain indicators including, mean and standard deviation. This was followed by exploring the system behaviour when pressure and flowrate control strategies were executed to minimize fault impacts. Fault monitoring, using the indicator data, was successful. For instance, as a 1 mm leak was induced and the consumption increased by 34%, the standard deviation in pressure drop reduced by 6% and the mean actuation time decreased by 13%. Though the mean in pressure drop was useful for fault monitoring other pressure indicators, including standard deviation, provided additional monitoring capabilities. During this monitoring exercise, it was also found that improved sensor accuracy resulted in less reading variations, obtaining more conclusive results and identifying faults of smaller sizes. As faults were accurately identified and characterised, it was then possible to mitigate their effects via pressure and flowrate adjustments. Results proved promising, as both contributed to air consumption decreases of 16% and 11%, respectively. Although such modifications decreased the production rate by 2-5%, the previously mentioned savings outweighed this decrease. This work highlights the need for development of fault monitoring and control systems which maintain the productivity and energy performance of pneumatic systems.

The improvement of environmental product performance is an important driver for product development. It is also related to the optimization of product packaging solutions. This paper addresses the question related to packaging eco-design strategies. A simplified approach, based on the Life Cycle Assessment methodology and Material Flow Analysis, is proposed to quickly compare alternative design solutions in terms of environmental impacts. Quantifying impacts and identifying the most significant design parameters for these products can assist industrial companies in avoiding potential impact transfer issues and finding the best solutions for their products. Multiple environmental impact categories and indicators are included to comprehensively consider impacts on the environment, resources, and human health. The proposed approach is applied to the environmental performance evaluation of several alternative design solutions for the packaging of a professional coffee machine. Alternative designs, starting from the selection of appropriate materials to the identification of solutions suitable for the reverse supply chain, will be compared and deeply analysed in environmental terms.

In the drive towards sustainable design, the push for products with greater longevity, reparability, and recyclability has never been more crucial. Central to this is the integration of eco-design principles within manufacturing processes. However, there is a gap: manufacturers lack both standardized processes and digital tools to support them, even though the promising digital product passport largely focuses on product lifespan.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are paramount, serving as benchmarks for both the manufacturing process and environmental sustainability of a product. These KPIs encompass factors like energy, water, compressed air, and material resource consumption. To emphasize the importance of these metrics, Europe is vulnerable to supply disruptions due to its high dependence on raw materials from non-EU countries.

This paper discusses the state of the art of digital twins and presents a digital shadow—a comprehensive digital tool design to support manufacturers during the product design phase. Drawing from a case study in the automotive sector, this tool not only aligns with recycling and sustainability objectives but also mitigates risks associated with raw material dependencies.

The resource consumption of products and production processes, regarding energy and material, is the most important parameter in assessing economic and ecological sustainability. Existing approaches for measuring resource consumption calculate key performance indicators, such as the carbon footprint, from which actions can be derived. The data acquisition, processing, and visualization are usually complex and individually adapted to the products and production machines. This paper presents a method to capture the resource consumption of a product and production machine with low effort and in a targeted manner to calculate the carbon footprint subsequently. The approach's novelty lies in linking any sensor technology with a cross-platform application, integrating existing data sets, and incorporating gamification techniques. Gamifying the process, users engage more with the data, leading to higher awareness and deeper insights. The application offers an intuitive user interface displaying resource consumption by calculating the environmental impact of the production. The live data integration allows for immediate monitoring of the effect of adaptions to the production process, that helps to create a better understanding of contributions to resource consumption. The use of the application is highlighted in a case study of industrial complexity.

The plastics industry has revolutionized several sectors, from packaging to automotive, enabling companies to develop innovative products and enhance their economic competitiveness. However, the exponential growth of this industry has also resulted in a concerning increase in plastic waste, leading to environmental repercussions such as microplastic contamination, marine pollution and plastic landfills. Therefore, researchers, governments, and industrial stakeholders are starting to work collaboratively to address this sustainability issue by adopting a life cycle perspective. Nevertheless, plastic waste generation is not slowing down, and waste management strategies, along with other actions across the value chain, need to be improved. While limiting single-use plastics and promoting sustainable consumer practices is crucial, these measures alone may not be sufficient. Figuring out how to maximize products and materials' lifespan by exploring circular economy opportunities is just as important as minimizing global consumption. This research explores the challenges and opportunities faced by the plastics industry and draws a prototype roadmap to identify sustainable business opportunities and routes of implementation. It builds on previous works on sustainable value roadmapping by defining a vision, identifying drives, highlighting business opportunities and discussing enablers. Results systematize and expand opportunities and challenges identified in scientific literature and industrial reports whilst clearly outlining a vision.

Today, innovations are no longer defined just by technical progress but also, in particular, by environmental aspects (such as carbon gas emissions). The issue of reuse is also becoming increasingly central to purchasing decisions and is forcing manufacturing companies to deal transparently with environmental impacts. This is also receiving a lot of political attention and is underlined by increasingly far-reaching regulations on sustainability, such as CSRD, Product Declarations, Transparent Supply Chains, Substance Compliance, etc. Since 80% of the environmental impact is already determined in the early product development phases, there is a high potential for improvement. This is where engineering data management approaches (such as PLM) come into play as a systematic approach to data, document, and information management. Many KPIs for determining the environmental impact are often already available in PLM. Still, it is necessary to bring them into context in a targeted way to support early qualitative and quantitative evaluations in the engineering phases regarding the current environmental impact of the design. The paper, therefore, presents a concept based on PLM-available data along the product engineering process for assessing ecological impact. This includes the product life cycle (and the supply chain) as well as the prototypical provision of environmental information and is demonstrated using platform technology by CONTACT Software.

Life cycle engineering (LCE) was introduced in the early 1990s with a focus on eco-efficiency, hence designing products to reduce the environmental impact over their life cycle while maintaining or increasing the value created. In the meantime, the world has seen the emergence of a climate crisis and a biodiversity crisis despite significant eco-efficiency improvements of individual products and services over the years, highlighting the gap between bottom-up LCE activities and top-down sustainability concepts such as planetary boundaries and net-zero targets for climate change.

This paper presents a structured LCE approach for practitioners, supporting life cycle engineering of product life cycles with an absolute sustainability perspective towards achieving net-zero targets. An industrial case is provided to demonstrate the applicability of the methodology.