Title: Assessing sustainability and supporting compliance to standards in continuous industrial processes

Authors: Margherita Peruzzini; Andrea Luzi; Eugenia Marilungo

Addresses: Department of Industrial Engineering and Mathematical Sciences, Università Politecnica delle Marche, via Brecce Bianche, 60131 Ancona, Italy ' Department of Industrial Engineering and Mathematical Sciences, Università Politecnica delle Marche, via Brecce Bianche, 60131 Ancona, Italy ' Department of Industrial Engineering and Mathematical Sciences, Università Politecnica delle Marche, via Brecce Bianche, 60131 Ancona, Italy

Abstract: Nowadays, companies need to develop sustainable solutions to be competitive and to respect international standards. It means producing products compliant to target costs, impacts and risks, as well as exploiting sustainable processes. This is particularly challenging for those processes requiring a large consumption of energy, which have high environmental and economic impacts. In this paper the industrial process of plastic material extrusion is considered and analysed. Indeed, it is a highly energy-consuming process that requires monitoring the energy consumption and controlling the process parameters to increase the sustainability and assure the respect of standards. The research is based on lifecycle design (LCD) and sustainable manufacturing principles. The proposed method aims at improving the extrusion process sustainability by identifying the more energy-consuming phases and evaluating the impact of manufacturing process items on the achievement of target values. The industrial case study demonstrates how such a method supports sustainability optimisation and compliance to standards.

Keywords: sustainable manufacturing; environmental standards; safety standards; process lifecycle assessment; lifecycle design; LCD; energy management; sustainability; compliance; sustainable development; plastics extrusion; energy consumption; case study.

DOI: 10.1504/IJPLM.2014.065862

International Journal of Product Lifecycle Management, 2014 Vol.7 No.2/3, pp.137 - 165

Received: 26 Nov 2013
Accepted: 28 May 2014

Published online: 13 Dec 2014 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article