An Information Modeling Framework and Desktop Application to Compose Unit Manufacturing Process Models for Sustainable Manufacturing Assessment

Graduation date: 2017The demand from consumers for more sustainable products, and the need to comply with government regulations motivates manufacturers to evaluate their operations for opportunities to reduce environmental impact and improve economic competitiveness. Manufacturers have actively improved the sustainability performance of their products through the use of sustainability assessment methods and tools. Recently however, manufacturers have struggled to maintain the necessary gains in energy and material efficiency due to the inadequacy of current, mature sustainability assessment methods and tools. This situation is compounded since new methods and tools continue to be developed for specialized applications, leading to inaccurate assessments in other domains. Overcoming these barriers requires standardized sustainability assessment methods and tools that are ready for use (plug-and-play) and contain accurate manufacturing process-level information. The research conducted herein posits that this barrier can be overcome through the advancement of information modeling and the automation of manufacturing system assessments. Thus, manufacturing process models would be composed to preserve information flows. Therefore, the work presented attempted three goals: 1) Assess the barriers to sustainable manufacturing through a review of the academic literature and roundtable meetings with industry; 2) Propose an information modeling framework to trace, capture, and control information flows within a composed manufacturing system for sustainability assessment; and 3) Develop a desktop application implementing the framework to accelerate the sustainability assessment of composed manufacturing systems. Results from realizing the framework through an underpinning XML Schema and overlaying graphical user interface indicate that the presented approach would be useful in conducting sustainable manufacturing assessments. Future work should focus on improving the robustness of the information framework and the resulting XML Schema by incorporating validation content and structure for improved quality and composability of unit manufacturing process models