A holistic framework for environmental impacts in production tools to enable optimisation
Posten, Katharina
(2012)
A holistic framework for environmental impacts in production tools to enable optimisation.
PhD thesis, Dublin City University.
Energy and resource efficiency are key for establishing a sustainable manufacturing sector. For this, a holistic environmental impact assessment methodology is required
which combines environmental regulations and energy efficiency methods to give standardised environmental impacts that can be easily compared across different
products. Focussing this method on production tools maximises the savings enabled through this standardised approach, as they directly affect all other factory systems. The methodology has to include not only the volume of consumption of substances used but also their embedded footprints of energy, greenhouse gasses and other environmental aspects such as toxicity or eutrophication. Including these allows the methodology to balance substances against each other whilst keeping in mind tool consumption rates and tool operation. For complex manufacturing tools, the selection of which substances to monitor is another important consideration, to allow widespread adaptation of the methodology.
This research developed a holistic environmental optimisation methodology for resources used in dynamic processing tools, without the need for experimentation. It is based on transparency and key environmental performance indicators and allows dynamic modelling of tool behaviour to find holistically optimised consumption rates. Usage data obtained from a production tool is used to show the application and validity of the methodology.