A Simulation-based Methodology of Assessing Environmental Sustainability and Productivity for Integrated Process and Production Plans

With the increasing attention directed to sustainable manufacturing, systematic methodologies are needed for not only incorporating the traditional performance indicators such as cost and quality, but also environmental impacts during the production stage. This requires the selection of processes and process settings for the production of the design features to be optimal (i.e., higher productivity and lower negative environmental impact). Oftentimes, during process planning the improvement of one performance indicator (e.g., energy consumption) is at the cost of other ones (e.g., tool usage). In this paper, we introduce a systematic methodology that enables the combined assessment of environmental sustainability and productivity for integrated process and production plans using multi-objective optimization techniques. A case study of machining processes in a machine shop has been performed to demonstrate the proposed methodology.