Title: Designing sustainable production systems with 'GraFem'

Authors: Volker Grienitz; André-Marcel Schmidt

Addresses: Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Siegen, Paul-Bonatz-Str. 9-11, 57068 Siegen, Germany ' Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Siegen, Paul-Bonatz-Str. 9-11, 57068 Siegen, Germany

Abstract: The at the University of Siegen developed production system modelling method 'GraFem' allows a function-orientated depiction of a manufacturing system with help of a predefined set of symbols and an underlying semantics. Through this, manufacturing systems can be regarded at any level of detail. The depiction of the manufacturing system can be added by additional 'swimming lanes' that contain differentiated information such as weak points and potentials or even sources of waste. At this, the possibility of multiple views constitutes one specific feature of 'GraFem'. Thus, it is in particular possible to focus on the examination of sources of waste as for example the dissipation of energy. The paper presents this specific view of 'GraFem' that can help to endorse manufacturing in terms of sustainability. [Received 20 January 2011; Revised 15 July 2011; Accepted 3 August 2011]

Keywords: function-orientated modelling; sustainable manufacturing; production planning; sustainability; semantics; waste sources; manufacturing systems; visualisation; process modelling.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMR.2013.051837

International Journal of Manufacturing Research, 2013 Vol.8 No.1, pp.1 - 17

Published online: 29 Jan 2014 *

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