Evaluating environmental impacts of production process by simulation based life cycle assessment

Historically, the manufacturing industry is one of the main contributors to the environmental issues. With conservation of the environment becoming more and more critical for survival, it is of importance for the manufacturing industry to take responsibility for minimizing their productions’ environmental impacts. Life cycle assessment has been widely used in the product’s development phase within the manufacturing industry. However, the environmental impacts that come from various dynamic manufacturing processes are only estimated with large uncertainty. Some studies have suggested that the combination of life cycle assessment and production flow simulation is an appropriate approach to address the environmental impacts from the manufacturing processes. Nevertheless, these studies are often limiting their concerns to the limited life cycle phases or certain environmental impacts. This study proposes a framework regarding how to develop a method for evaluating and identifying improvements that help reduce the life-cycle environmental impacts of complex production processes. In addition, this work employs a simplified case study to demonstrate the proposed framework.