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► Journal BrowserSpecial Issue "Digital Transformation and Its Opportunities for Sustainable Manufacturing"
A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050).
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 October 2021.
Special Issue Editors
Interests: Life Cycle Engineering; Sustainable Manufacturing; Life Cycle Assessment; Life Cycle Costing; Circular Economy
Interests: Engineering Research Methodology, System of Systems Engineering, Sustainable Product-Service-Systems, Recycling 4.0, Research data management, Teaching and training for sustainability, Automotive Engineering, E-Mobility
Interests: Production Planning,Process Simulation, Modeling, Operations Management, Production, Production Management, Optimization, Sustainability metrics, Integrated management systems, Modular LCA assessment, Industrial Symbiosis, Eco-design, Technology substitution
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
The digital transformation has been touted as the game changer especially for the manufacturing sector. Although mainly looked at from the perspective of economic growth (or recovery given the COVID-19 pandemic), businesses and governments recognise the potential of leveraging the same digital transformation enablers to facilitate the sector’s transition to sustainable manufacturing. For instance, the adoption of Industrial Internet-of-Things (IIoT), pervasive sensorisation of production systems at the shop floor- and factory-level, as well as the digitalisation of whole supply chains are generating an unprecedented amount of data. Coupled with the deployment of Cyber-Physical Production System (CPPS) and Digital Twins, these data open up new ways for how manufacturing systems and processes can be efficiently embedded in supply chains – so that the manufacturing and the whole life cycle of products consume less resources, emit less harmful emissions, and generate less waste and pollution.
This special issue aims to further explore the topics at the intersection of digital transformation and sustainable manufacturing. This special issue in particular explores research on intersection area between applicative sustainability aspects driving change in product chains and adoption of digital tools and methodologies to contextualize and improve related assessment, analysis and optimization. Both original research and review papers are welcome, from the various research disciplines, such as smart and sustainable manufacturing, life cycle engineering, eco-design, remanufacturing, circular economy and system of systems engineering. The following non-exhaustive list of topics can be addressed:
- Data science and AI methods towards mitigating the environmental impacts of manufacturing;
- Engineering and design of sustainable products, processes and/or supply chains;
- Industry 4.0, Industrial Internet-of-Things (IIoT), Digital Twins and/or Cyber-Physical Production Systems (CPPS);
- Sustainable cyber-physical product- and/or production-service-systems;
- Shop-floor and/or dynamic life cycle assessment (LCA);
- Sustainable operational and business model innovation;
- Digital tracking and monitoring systems for sustainability;
- Circular economy through management and digital tools;
- Sustainability metrics;
- Compliance with international standards.
Dr. Jonathan Sze Choong Low
Dr. Mark Mennenga
Dr. Carlo Brondi
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 papers will be 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 1900 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
- Life Cycle Engineering
- Industrial Sustainability
- Eco-design
- Industrial Ecology
- Circular Economy
- Digitalization
- Industry 4.0
- Cyber-Physical Production System (CPPS)
- Industrial Internet-of-Things (IIoT)
- Smart sensoring
- LCA
Planned Papers
The below list represents only planned manuscripts. Some of these manuscripts have not been received by the Editorial Office yet. Papers submitted to MDPI journals are subject to peer-review.
Title: Digitalization Platform for Mechanistic Models in the Battery Production Chain
Authors: Matthias Thomitzek; Oke Schmidt; Tim Abraham; Arno Kwade; Christoph Herrmann
Affiliation: Institute of Machine Tools and Production Technologies (IWF), Chair of Sustainable Manufacturing and Life Cycle Engineering, Technische Universität Braunschweig, Langer Kamp 19b, 38106 Braunschweig, Germany
Abstract: The application of batteries in electric vehicles and stationary storage systems is widely seen as a promising enabler for a sustainable mobility and energy sector. Although significant improvements have been achieved in the last decade in terms of higher battery performance and lower production costs, there remains high potential to be tapped, especially during the battery production chain. However, battery production process is highly complex due to numerous process-product interdependencies along the process chain, many of which are not yet fully understood. In order to move away from expensive trial-and-error operation of production lines, a methodology is needed to make knowledge-based decisions to improve the outcome of battery production. In the present work, a digitalization platform is presented which combines a process chain and a battery cell model to quantitatively predict the impact of processes on the final battery cell performance. The digitalization platform enables coupling of diverse mechanistic models for the individual processes and the battery cell, ultimately providing a virtual representation of a battery production line that allows optimal production settings to be identified in silico. The digitalization platform is suited to provide decision support and can also be implemented as part of a digital twin to control the production line.
Title: Directed laser deposition sustainability: life cycle assessment of powder feedstock material reuse
Authors: Yang Shanshan; Davide Verdi
Affiliation: Advanced Remanufacturing and Technology Centre
Abstract: In the present document, the advantages connected to the reuse of powder feedstock material in directed laser deposition are analysed. In particular, Ti6Al4V ELI powder was used to deposit samples coupons. The un-melted powder blown during the process was collected, sieved, and reused for a subsequent cycle of deposition. The process was repeated for a total of three cycles of builds without addition of new powder. A life cycle assessment is reported comparing two scenarios. In the first one, the un-melted powder is reused as previously described. In the second one, virgin powder was hypothetically used in every cycle of deposition. Considerations on raw material usage and reduction of wastes and emissions are reported. The results of the study will provide data to support the use of additive manufacturing technologies toward sustainable manufacturing and remanufacturing.
Title: An integrated approach for resource-efficient production planning
Authors: Berend Denkena; Marc-André Dittrich; Simon Kettelmann; Leon Reuter; Jonas Matthies
Affiliation: Institute of Production Engineering and Machine Tools (IFW), Leibniz Universität Hannover, An der Universität 2, 30823 Garbsen, Germany
Abstract: The starting point for sustainable production is production planning. As production planning can be divided into different phases that differ in their level of detail, the consideration of energy and resource efficiency in each of these phases is necessary in order to promote sustainable production. In this paper, an approach for identifying resource-efficient manufacturing routes during rough-cut planning, as well as specifying resource-efficient process execution during detailed planning is proposed. The aim of this approach is to bring the planning phases together and align them according to the objective of sustainable production. During rough-cut planning, an estimation of consumed resources during manufacturing is made by specifying possible manufacturing routes and deriving requirements for machines. The identified requirements allow for an estimation of consumed energy and resources during manufacturing. In the detailed planning phase, an assessment of energy and resource consumption is made considering required energy for restoring used resources to a usable state. The approach as a whole is evaluated by means of an exemplary component from the aerospace industry. The results indicate that rough-cut planning under uncertainties in the early stage of process chain design can form a reasonable estimation about resource efficiency of possible manufacturing routes. For detailed planning it was found that the proposed approach enables the identification of a resource-preserving process execution.