An integrated method for sustainable manufacturing systems design

In the past decade, there has been an increasing awareness in development of sustainable manufacturing systems as governments in many countries have been enforcing ever-stricter environmental policies and regulations in industry by promoting energy saving and low emissions manufacturing activities. Lean manufacturing can be helpful for achieving a sustainable manufacturing system as it can reduce production wastes and increase manufacturing efficiency. Nevertheless, this lean approach does not include a consideration in energy consumption and carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions when designing a lean manufacturing system. This paper presents a methodology which can be useful for measuring energy consumption and CO₂ emissions for a typical manufacturing system design at an early stage. A case study was carried out for obtaining computational results using the developed methodology based on data collected from a real production line.