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Industrial Sustainability: Production Systems Design and Optimization across Sustainability

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A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 February 2021) | Viewed by 13056

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Special Issue Editors

Dr. Marcello Fera

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Guest Editor

Dipartimento di Ingegneria—Università della Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”, Via Roma, 29, 81031 Aversa, CE, Italy
Interests: industrial manufacturing system design and optimization; industrial production management and optimization
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Dr. Fabio Fruggiero

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Guest Editor

School of Engineering, University of Basilicata, Via Ateneo Lucano 10, 85100 Potenza, Italy
Interests: planning and management of industrial systems; logistics; human factors; scheduling; optimisation
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Highly sustainable enterprises (HSEs) are nowadays more likely to think about structuring equitable, bearable, and viable methodologies, and their approach is likely to assist the optimal design of production systems and supply. This is mainly supported by robust sensing and smart technologies/organizations to meet customers’ needs. In the Industry 4.0 era, HSEs are widely used to assist with collaborative robotic systems, human interactive work with autonomous and tracked machines/systems, product re-designing and re-building for improved additive layering, intelligent machines for quality and safety assessments and availability management, processes and product services for mass customization and supply chain design, and cloud-based management tools for decision support and many other new management paradigms.

In this context toward sustainability (in its social, economic, and environmental sides), it is possible to assess the main “faults” of actual production systems and, so, to design and arrange new models and methods for the production process and supply in the future.

The aim of this Special Issue is to collect original research papers and literature reviews about new ways to design and optimize industrial production and supply chain systems. This Special Issue intends to cover a full range of topics related to sustainability in production systems and supply chains as listed below:

Sustainability as a key factor for industrial systems design;
Sustainability as a key factor for industrial supply chain design;
Sustainability as a key factor for operations design and optimization;
Sustainability as a key factor for supply chain management;
Sustainable machines and production systems enhanced by enabling Internet of things (IoT) technology for performance management and optimisation;
Sustainable workbench and job tasks for human reliability and safety management;
Sustainable performance management in collaborative robotic systems;
Sustainable energy management for additive manufacturing environmental processes and organizations;
Sustainable solutions using digital twin models for operation design and optimization; and
Sustainable organizations in Industry 4.0 perspectives.

Research papers and literature reviews not strictly related to the previous topics, but related to the main aim of this Special Issue, are also welcome.

Dr. Marcello Fera
Dr. Fabio Fruggiero
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

industrial sustainability;
sustainable supply chain management;
sustainable operations management and optimization;
industrial process design;
digital technologies for sustainability;
Industry 4.0 technologies for stainable processes;
decision support systems for sustainability management;
industrial sustainability development

Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

11 pages, 582 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Electroplating and PVD Finishing Technologies in the Fashion Industry: Perspectives and Scenarios

by Romeo Bandinelli, Virginia Fani and Bianca Bindi

Sustainability 2021, 13(8), 4453; https://doi.org/10.3390/su13084453 - 16 Apr 2021

Cited by 5 | Viewed by 2483

Abstract

This work deals with a comparison between electroplating and Physical Vapor Deposition (PVD) finishing technologies applied in the fashion industry, with a special focus on their environmental impacts. The goal of this work is to present and validate a Decision Support System (DSS) allowing companies to identify, through Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) analysis, which of the two types of finishing processes is more suitable in comparison with specific KPIs. After an investigation on the literature and an industrial background regarding the two technologies, the model and, in particular, the sequence of activities that were conducted, are presented. Since LCA is an articulated process, requiring specific and adequate skills that are often unavailable within companies operating in this specific sector, a tool that facilitates LCA execution is a requisite. This tool, though potential publicity will facilitate the adoption of these approaches and sustainability as a driver in the selection of different production process strategies. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Industrial Sustainability: Production Systems Design and Optimization across Sustainability)

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12 pages, 764 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Assessing Risks Awareness in Operating Rooms among Post-Graduate Students: A Pilot Study

by Anna Rita Corvino, Pasquale Manco, Elpidio Maria Garzillo, Maria Grazia Lourdes Monaco, Alessandro Greco, Salvatore Gerbino, Francesco Caputo, Roberto Macchiaroli and Monica Lamberti

Sustainability 2021, 13(7), 3860; https://doi.org/10.3390/su13073860 - 31 Mar 2021

Cited by 3 | Viewed by 2205

Abstract

Background: In this study, we promote a global approach to occupational risk perception in order to improve occupational health and safety training programs. The study investigates the occupational risk perception of operating room healthcare workers using an Analytic Hierarchy Process approach. Methods: A pilot study was carried out through a cross-sectional survey in a university hospital in Southern Italy. An ad hoc questionnaire was administered to enrolled medical post-graduate students working in the operating room. Results: Fifty medical specialists from seven fields (anaesthetists, digestive system surgeons, general surgeons, maxillofacial surgeons, thoracic surgeons, urologists, and gynaecologists) were questioned about perceived occupational risk by themselves. Biological, ionizing radiation, and chemical risks were the most commonly perceived in order of priority (w = 0.300, 0.219, 0.210). Concerning the biological risk, gynaecologists unexpected perceived this risk as less critical (w = 0.2820) than anaesthesiologists (w = 0.3354), which have the lowest perception of the risk of ionizing radiation (w = 0.1657). Conclusions: Prioritization methods could improve risk perception in healthcare settings and help detect training needs and perform sustainable training programs. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Industrial Sustainability: Production Systems Design and Optimization across Sustainability)

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18 pages, 5500 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Retrofitting a Process Plant in an Industry 4.0 Perspective for Improving Safety and Maintenance Performance

by Fabio Di Carlo, Giovanni Mazzuto, Maurizio Bevilacqua and Filippo Emanuele Ciarapica

Sustainability 2021, 13(2), 646; https://doi.org/10.3390/su13020646 - 12 Jan 2021

Cited by 32 | Viewed by 4733

Abstract

The transformation from traditional industry to Industry 4.0 can bring many benefits in various spheres, from efficiency to safety. However, this transition involves adopting technologically advanced machinery with a high level of digitization and communication. The costs and time to replace obsolete machines could be unsustainable for many companies while retrofitting the old machinery. To make them ready to the Industry 4.0 context, they may represent an alternative to the replacement. Even if there are many studies related to retrofitting applied to machinery, there are very few studies related to the literature process industry sector. In this work, we propose a case study of a two-phase mixing plant that needed to be enhanced in the safety and maintainability conditions with reasonable times and costs. In this regard, the Digital Twin techniques and Deep Learning algorithms will be tested to predict and detect future faults, not only already visible and existing malfunctions. This approach strength is that, with limited investments and reasonable times, it allows the transformation of an old plant into a smart plant capable of communicating quickly with operators to increase its safety and maintainability. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Industrial Sustainability: Production Systems Design and Optimization across Sustainability)

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17 pages, 1684 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Economic and Environmental Sustainability for Aircrafts Service Life

by Marcello Fera, Raffaele Abbate, Mario Caterino, Pasquale Manco, Roberto Macchiaroli and Marta Rinaldi

Sustainability 2020, 12(23), 10120; https://doi.org/10.3390/su122310120 - 03 Dec 2020

Cited by 7 | Viewed by 2577

Abstract

Aircrafts are responsible for a significant environmental impact mainly due to the air pollution caused by their motors. The use of composite materials for their production is a way to significantly reduce the weight of the structures and to maximise the ratio between the payload weight and the gasoline consumption. Moreover, the design phase has to consider the cost of different operations performed during the aircraft service life. During the entire life cycle, one of the main costs is the maintenance one. In the current literature, there is a lack of knowledge of methods for maintenance cost estimation in the aircraft industry; moreover, very few environmental assessment methods have been developed. Thus, the aim of this paper is to define a new method to support the aircraft design process; both the environmental and the economic dimensions have been included with the purpose of assessing the aircraft sustainability during its service life. A green index has been identified mixing the maintenance cost and an environmental parameter with the aim of identifying the greenest solution. A final practical application shows the feasibility and the simple application of the proposed approach. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Industrial Sustainability: Production Systems Design and Optimization across Sustainability)

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