Sustainability is one of the key requirements for the manufacturing industry to be competitive and long term. Sustainable manufacturing refers to a new model of production that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs (Brundtland Report, 1987). It implies that manufacturing companies have to consider three different challenges: ecological (reducing environmental impact and resource consumption), economical (improving overall process efficiency and reducing global costs), and social (increasing social effectiveness and reducing human-related impact).
As a consequence, other than the more conventional firm performance objectives of cost, quality, speed, flexibility and dependability, today there is a new requirement for firms to deliver on sustainable objectives. Traditional indicators of sustainability refer to cost and environmental impact; more recently, human factors – in light of their relevance to process efficiency and general profitability – are also included in this scenario, and include health and safety, human-centred design, workplace ergonomics and work-life balance (Jasiulewicz-Kaczmarek and Saniuk, 2015).
In this context, manufacturing companies are seeking new ways to integrate economic, environmental and social practices to develop unique capabilities to improve their sustainable competitiveness. In particular, novel agile methods for integrated sustainable manufacturing are welcome.
With this special issue, we aim to address various areas of sustainable manufacturing from the research perspective: methods to design sustainable manufacturing systems and measure their global sustainability, best practices to promote sustainable development, innovative simulation tools for advanced manufacturing systems assessment, cutting-edge technologies to realise highly sustainable and competitive manufacturing assets, and novel prototyping techniques to test the level of sustainability of modern industries.
References:
Brundlandt, G.H. “Our Common Future. Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development”. Oxford University Press, Oxford (1987)
Jasiulewicz-Kaczmarek, M. and Saniuk, A. “Human Factor in Sustainable Manufacturing” in Universal Access in Human-Computer Interaction. Access to the Human Environment and Culture. LNCS 9178, pp. 444-455, Springer International Publishing (2015)
Suitable topics include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Adaptive methods for sustainable manufacturing
- Agile design and evaluation methodologies
- Engineered innovative product/process design for sustainability
- Environmentally conscious design and manufacturing
- Ergonomics and human factors in sustainable manufacturing
- Integrated methods for sustainable design and manufacturing
- Manufacturability issues in sustainable product and process design
- Process design for human-related aspects
- Product and process design for sustainability
- Product design and manufacturing methods for human-related impact assessment
- Product design for disassembly, reuse, recovery, recycling, remanufacturing
- Product sustainability assessment and evaluation
- Resource management for sustainability
- Sustainable manufacturing quality systems
- Transdisciplinary and integrated sustainable manufacturing systems design
Important Dates
Full paper due: 31 December, 2016
Notification of acceptance: 31 March, 2017
Final version of the paper due: 31 May, 2017
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