Browsing by Author "Despeisse, Melanie"

Now showing 1 - 9 of 9
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    A collection of tools for factory eco-efficiency
    (Elsevier, 2016-02-19) Despeisse, Melanie; Davé, Aanand; Litos, Lampros; Roberts, Simon; Ball, Peter D.; Evans, Stephen
    co-efficiency is generally defined as doing more with less, aiming to decouple environmental impact from economic and social value creation. This paper presents three tools to guide the implementation of eco-efficiency in factories: (1) definition and patterns of good practices for sustainable manufacturing, (2) a self-assessment tool and maturity grid, and (3) a factory modelling framework.
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    Design of sustainable industrial systems by integrated modeling of factory building and manufacturing processes
    (Elsevier, 2012) Despeisse, Melanie; Ball, Peter D.
    This paper presents an integrated approach that combines ‘Sustainable Building Design’ tools and ‘Sustainable Manufacturing Process’ tools to create a tool for the design of sustainable manufacturing systems.’ Currently no such integrated tools are in use by manufacturers to assess energy performance, identify improvement areas and help suggest actions. This paper describes the development of a tool that through such integrated modelling can help identify improvements via its library of tactics. These sustainable manufacturing tactics have to account for location and time, as well as production process, in a manner that is not currently supported by either manufacturing process simulation tools, or building energy tools. Through case study applications, the integrated modelling of real world industrial processes is demonstrated, from target and boundary settings, mapping (manufacturing process systems, material flow, surrounding buildings and facilities), data collection, simulation, improvement opportunities and optimisation.
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    The emergence of sustainable manufacturing practices
    (Taylor & Francis, 2012-05-01T00:00:00Z) Despeisse, Melanie; Mbaye, F.; Ball, Peter D.; Levers, A.
    Sustainable manufacturing appears to be a rapidly developing field and it would be expected that there is a growing body of knowledge in this area. Initial examination of the literature shows evidence of sustainable work in the areas of product design, supply chain, production technology and waste avoidance activities. Manufacturers publish metrics showing significant improvements in environmental performance at high level but information on how these improvements are achieved is sparse. Examining peer-reviewed publications focused on production operations there are few cases reporting details and there has been little prior analysis of published sustainable manufacturing activity. Moreover, the mismatch between academic and practitioner language leads to challenges in interpretation. This article captures and analyses the types of sustainable manufacturing activities through literature review. In turn, this can help manufacturers to access examples of good practice and help academics identify areas for future research.
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    Factory modelling: combining energy modelling for buildings and production systems
    (Springer, 2013-12-31) Ball, Peter D.; Despeisse, Melanie; Evans, Stephen; Greenough, Richard M.; Hope, Steve B.; Kerrigan, Ruth; Levers, A.; Lunt, Peter A. V.; Murray, Vincent; Oates, Michael R.; Shao, Li; Waltniel, Timothy; Wright, A.
    Traditionally, manufacturing facilities and building services are analysed separately to manufacturing operations. This is despite manufacturing operations using and discarding energy with the support of facilities. Therefore improvements in energy and other resource use to work towards sustainable manufacturing have been sub-optimal. This paper presents research in which buildings, facilities and manufacturing operations are viewed as inter-related systems. The objectives are to improve overall resource efficiency and to exploit opportunities to use energy and / or waste from one process as potential inputs to other processes. The novelty here is the combined simulation of production and building energy use and waste in order to reduce overall resource consumption. The paper presents a literature review, develops the conceptual modelling approach and introduces the prototype IES Ltd THERM software. The work has been applied to industrial cases to demonstrate the ability of the prototype to support activities towards sustainable manufacturing.
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    Industrial ecology at factory level: a conceptual model
    (Elsevier Science B.V., Amsterdam., 2012-08-31T00:00:00Z) Despeisse, Melanie; Ball, Peter D.; Evans, Stephen; Levers, A.
    Growing environmental concerns caused by natural resource depletion and pollution need to be addressed. One approach to these problems is Sustainable Development, a key concept for our society to meet present as well as future needs worldwide. Manufacturing clearly has a major role to play in the move towards a more sustainable society. However it appears that basic principles of environmental sustainability are not systematically applied, with practice tending to focus on local improvements. The aim of the work presented in this paper is to adopt a more holistic view of the factory unit to enable opportunities for wider improvement. This research analyses environmental principles and industrial practice to develop a conceptual manufacturing ecosystem model as a foundation to improve environmental performance. The model developed focuses on material, energy and waste understand the interactions between manufacturing operations, supporting facilities and surrounding buildings. The research was conducted in three steps: (1) existing concepts and models for industrial sustainability were reviewed and environmental practices in manufacturing were collected and analysed; (2) gaps in knowledge and practice were identi model based on industrial ecology (IE). This conceptual model has novelty in detailing IE application at factory level and integrating all resource modelling tools to seek integrated solutions for lower resource input, higher resource productivity, fewer wastes and emissions, and lower operating cost within the boundary of a factory unit.flows to betterfied; (3) the outcome is a manufacturing ecosystemflows. The work is a base on which to build quantitative 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights
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    Industrial ecology at factory level: a prototype methodology
    (Professional Engineering Publishing, 2012-10-31T00:00:00Z) Despeisse, Melanie; Ball, Peter D.; Evans, Stephen; Levers, A.
    The concept of sustainable manufacturing is a form of pollution prevention that integrates environmental considerations in the production of goods while focusing on efficient resource use. Taking the industrial ecology perspective, this efficiency comes from improved resource flow management. The assessment of material, energy and waste resource flows, therefore, offers a route to viewing and analysing a manufacturing system as an ecosystem using industrial ecology biological analogy and can, in turn, support the identification of improvement opportunities in the material, energy and waste flows. This application of industrial ecology at factory level is absent from the literature. This article provides a prototype methodology to apply the concepts of industrial ecology using material, energy and waste process flows to address this gap in the literature. Various modelling techniques were reviewed and candidates selected to test the prototype methodology in an industrial case. The application of the prototype methodology showed the possibility of using the material, energy and waste resource flows through the factory to link manufacturing operations and supporting facilities, and to identify potential improvements in resource use. The outcomes of the work provide a basis to build the specifications for a modelling tool that can support those analysing their manufacturing system to improve their environmental performance and move towards sustainable manufacturing
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    Sustainable manufacturing tactics and cross-functional factory modelling
    (Elsevier, 2013-03) Despeisse, Melanie; Oates, Michael R.; Ball, Peter D.
    Manufacturers are under increasing pressure from stakeholders and stricter regulations to reduce the environmental impact of their activities. The research on sustainability in general and on sustainable manufacturing in particular is rapidly developing and crossing disciplinary boundaries. There are numerous well-developed concepts for industrial sustainability which can contribute to sustainable manufacturing, but there is a gap in knowledge on how to achieve the desired conceptual aims at operational level. There also is a growing volume of industrial cases on sustainable manufacturing practices, but little is known on how these improvements were conceived. Additionally, the means by which improvement options can be reproduced and modelled is lacking. This paper presents a tactics library to provide a connection between those generic sustainability concepts and more specific examples of operational practices for resource efficiency in factories. Then a factory modelling approach is introduced to support the use of tactics by combining the analysis of building energy and manufacturing process resource flows. Finally a step-by-step guide in the form of a workflow for factory modelling and resource flow analysis is presented and tested via a prototype tool. The aim was to provide guidelines for manufacturers to undertake the sustainability journey by guiding them through the steps of factory modelling, resource flow analysis and improvement opportunities identification. The paper has implications for researchers and practitioners as it demonstrates how factories can sustainably be improved in a structured, systematic and cross-functional way. This contributes to the need for expanding the scope of analysis beyond functional boundaries to apply sustainability at factory level.
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    Sustainable manufacturing tactics and improvement methodology : a structured and systematic approach to identify improvement opportunities
    (Cranfield University, 2013-04) Despeisse, Melanie; Ball, Peter
    Growing environmental concerns caused by increasing consumption of natural resources and pollution need to be addressed. Manufacturing dictates the efficiency with which resource inputs are transformed into economically valuable outputs in the form of products and services. Consequently it is also responsible for the resulting waste and pollution generated from this transformation process. This research explored the challenges faced by sustainable manufacturing as a concept and as a model for manufacturing systems. The work is strongly based on the concepts of sustainability and industrial ecology applied at factory level. The research objectives were to understand what companies are doing to improve their sustainability performance at operational level (resource productivity) and to help other companies repeating such improvements in their own factory. In other words, the aim is to generalise sustainable practices across the manufacturing industry. The work started with a review of existing theories and practices for sustainable manufacturing and other related fields of research such as industrial ecology, cleaner production and pollution prevention. The concepts, themes, strategies and principles found in the literature provided a strong foundation to approach resource productivity improvements. The industrial cases collected gave an insight into the application of these strategies and principles in a factory. From the analysis of existing theories and practices, generic tactics were developed by translating 1000+ practices into generic rules and by mapping them against strategies and principles for sustainable manufacturing to check the completeness and consistency of the tactics library. To test the tactics and assist the user in their use through factory modelling, an improvement methodology was developed based on the same strategies and principles to provide a structured guide for accessing tactics and systematically identifying improvement opportunities. The research findings were tested with a series of prototype applications. These tests were carried out as part of a wider project (THERM). This project uses a modelling and simulation approach to capture the resource flows (material, energy, water and waste), the interactions within the manufacturing system (manufacturing operations, surrounding buildings and supporting facilities) and the influence of external factors‘ variation (weather conditions, building orientation and neighbouring infrastructures). The outcomes of the prototype applications helped develop and refine the research findings. The contribution to knowledge of this research resides in bridging the gap between high-level concepts for sustainability and industrial practices by developing a library of tactics to generalise sustainable manufacturing practices and an improvement methodology to guide the tactics implementation. From a practical viewpoint, the research provides a structured and systematic approach for manufacturers to undertake the journey towards more sustainable practice by improving resource flows in their factory.
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    Zero carbon manufacturing through process flow modelling
    (2012-10-16) Despeisse, Melanie; Ball, Peter; Evans, Steve; Levers, Andy
    The pressure on natural resources and emerging environmental legislation are leading manufacturers to adopt solutions to reduce their environmental impact, thereby becoming more sustainable, while enhancing competitiveness. Current approaches in this area are fragmented and clustered around technologies rather than around processes that link the technologies together. There is a need to better understand material, energy and waste (MEW) flows, as well as the interaction between processes in a manufacturing facility from a systemic viewpoint. This paper presents an approach using process flow modelling in order to help manufacturers to identify potential improvements to progress towards competitive sustainable manufacturing. Ultimately they could reach zero carbon manufacturing (ZCM) by having zero material resource degradation, zero net energy demand and zero waste across the system.