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1 – 10 of 62S. Kara, P. Pornprasitpol and H. Kaebernick
Aims to develop a selective disassembly methodology for generating an optimum disassembly sequence for end‐of‐life (EOL) products.
Abstract
Purpose
Aims to develop a selective disassembly methodology for generating an optimum disassembly sequence for end‐of‐life (EOL) products.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper presents a selective disassembly methodology for EOL products. In order to achieve this, Nevins and Whitney's methodology for assembly was modified. In addition, a Java‐based software was developed to speed up the generation of all possible disassembly sequences.
Findings
Finds that the methodology developed by Nevins and Whitney for assembly is applicable to disassembly process. In addition, the winnowing process for disassembly is much easier than for assembly because of the selective disassembly approach, which automatically provides a significant constraint on possible sequences.
Research limitations/implications
Provides an easy to use and visual disassembly sequence generation tool for end‐of‐life products.
Practical implications
Disassembly is one of the significant cost drivers in achieving close loop manufacturing. Application of the methodology proposed in this paper will significantly reduce the disassembly time by providing a disassembly sequence for the selected components with reuse potential.
Originality/value
Provides a graphical representation of disassembly sequences at different stages of the process, which allows the user to visualize the disassembly process.
Details
Keywords
Sekar Vinodh and Gopinath Rathod
– The purpose of this paper is to present an integrated technical and economic model to evaluate the reusability of products or components.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to present an integrated technical and economic model to evaluate the reusability of products or components.
Design/methodology/approach
Life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology is applied to obtain the product’s environmental performance. Monte Carlo simulation is utilized for enabling sustainable product design.
Findings
The results show that the model is capable of assessing the potential reusability of used products, while the usage of simulation significantly increases the effectiveness of the model in addressing uncertainties.
Research limitations/implications
The case study has been conducted in a single manufacturing organization. The implications derived from the study are found to be practical and useful to the organization.
Practical implications
The paper reports a case study carried out for an Indian rotary switches manufacturing organization. Hence, the model is practically feasible.
Originality/value
The article presents a study that investigates LCA and simulation as enablers of sustainable product design. Hence, the contributions of this article are original and valuable.
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Keywords
Sekar Vinodh and K. Jayakrishna
– The purpose of this paper is to propose a new framework to evaluate the sustainability of product at design and development phase in the modern manufacturing system.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to propose a new framework to evaluate the sustainability of product at design and development phase in the modern manufacturing system.
Design/methodology/approach
A detailed examination over the literatures reveals that the current frameworks that are available to measure overall product sustainability do not effectively address all aspects of sustainability to full extent. An integrated model encompassing the approaches such as environmentally conscious quality function deployment (ECQFD), life cycle assessment (LCA) and sustainability analysis has been proposed.
Findings
The eco-friendly option as well as the component with high remanufacturing feasibility has been found. Also, the environmental impact of the component has been found.
Research limitations/implications
The integrated model has been test implemented in a single manufacturing organisation. In future, more number of studies could be conducted to ensure the practical feasibility.
Practical implications
The integrated model has been applied to an Indian organization manufacturing automotive assemblies. The case study also addresses the re-manufacturing feasibility of the product with validating the results at each step.
Originality/value
The study is the outcome of deploying integrated sustainability framework model in a manufacturing organisation. Hence, the contributions and findings are original.
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Keywords
The current changes and relevance of female entrepreneurship at the national and international level for economic growth, social impact and environmental degradation…
Abstract
The current changes and relevance of female entrepreneurship at the national and international level for economic growth, social impact and environmental degradation highlight the need for more analysis of female entrepreneurial typologies and value creations.
This chapter aims to contribute to the field of female entrepreneurship literature. It provides theoretical evidence about the main internal (personal characteristic and motivation, network) and external (women migration, crises, digitalization) drivers that trigger women entrepreneurs to undertake entrepreneurial actions in national and international contexts. Besides, this chapter conceptualizes a new untapped context of multiple value-creating entrepreneurial systems in the female entrepreneurship literature by uncovering a blended form of value creation encompassing several social, economic and environmental levels.
Details
Keywords
Jessica Hanafi, Sami Kara and Hartmut Kaebernick
End‐of‐life (EOL) products have become a major environmental issue among countries and manufacturers. This is due to the growing number of EOL products and their hazardous…
Abstract
Purpose
End‐of‐life (EOL) products have become a major environmental issue among countries and manufacturers. This is due to the growing number of EOL products and their hazardous contents. Many collection strategies and pilot projects have been conducted to manage EOL products, especially Waste Electrical and Electronics equipments (WEEEs). However, as characteristics of a population are different to one another, a customized collection strategy is required. The purpose of this paper is to find an effective collection strategy which considers cost and environmental impact simultaneously.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper presents an integrated collection strategy which combines a Fuzzy Colored Petri Net forecasting method and collection network model to collect EOL products. Colored Petri Net is used in modeling the integrated collection strategy. To test the collection strategy, a case study on mobile phone collection in Australia is presented.
Findings
The integrated collection strategy developed in this paper finds that by providing demographic data and historical sales of a relevant product in a certain location, the best strategy to collect EOL products in that location can be determined. This paper finds that the best strategy that suits one location might be different to other locations.
Originality/value
This paper presents a model which provides a customized collection strategy that follows the characteristics of a population. This strategy allows government organizations or manufacturers to simulate the strategies to collect EOL products in different locations.
Details
Keywords
Sami Kara, Suphunnika Ibbotson and Berman Kayis
Improved environmental performance of products and services have lately become one of the main strategic and operational goals of manufacturers. This is due to influences…
Abstract
Purpose
Improved environmental performance of products and services have lately become one of the main strategic and operational goals of manufacturers. This is due to influences from various stakeholders including government, consumers, societies and the business partners. Evidently, different manufacturers differently implement their environmental practices for sustainable product development depending on various driving factors such as customer awareness, legislation, economic benefits and competitive strategies, etc. In theory, manufacturers can efficiently undertake sustainable product development by implementing life cycle thinking into their system. This way, they can monitor the environment hot spots throughout a product life cycle and be able to minimise the environmental impact effectively. Therefore, several researchers have focused on developing tools and strategies to support the manufacturers in implementing sustainable manufacturing and product development studies. However, in reality, each manufacturer may operate their manufacturing system differently to accommodate different demands and constraints induced by firm characteristics and its regional location. Their attempts to implement the sustainable tools and strategies to their companies would also be different. Thus far, a number of studies have studied the implementation for a specific company. No studies have examined the relationship between their decisions and implementation for different characteristics of firms and different manufacturing locations. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to comprehensively investigate the practices of manufacturers towards sustainable product development.
Design/methodology/approach
A detailed statistical analysis was conducted on the survey data gathered from 330 manufacturing organisations in 13 countries. The research questions mainly cover implementation approaches, decision tools and techniques used and main driving forces at the strategic and operational levels concerning environmental practices in sustainable product development. This is to bridge the gaps between the research outputs and implementations in practice for the developed sustainable strategies and tools. Results highlighted interesting relationships of the implementations across different geographical regions (locations) as well as types and sizes of manufacturers. They can be used to shed some light for future research direction, the dominant driving forces of consumers and regulations importance towards the manufacturer practices to improve not only the environmental performance but also their social responsibility. In total, 12 null hypotheses were formulated to test the relationships as well as the correlations between the manufacturing characteristics and the research questions which cover several driving forces in implementing the environmental strategies.
Findings
The results of this large-scale global research highlighted that different geographical/manufacturing regions are driven mainly by legislation, competition and consumer pressures whilst manufacturers of different sizes utilise various decision tools. Design tools such as LCA, DFE and ECQFD methods are likely to be utilised in the medium-and high-complexity product development by OEM and ETM manufacturers. Environmental responsibility plays an important role and also enhanced by other driving forces such as the economic benefits, the long-term survival in the market and the company image.
Research limitations/implications
Future work may include some or all of the following; such as respondents of this survey may be re-contacted and comparative data can be gathered from these manufacturers to capture the changes over the years. Further investigation of the sustainable supply chain management approaches, influences of dynamic driving forces and the environmental practices towards cleaner production practices such as improving energy efficiency, minimising waste, recycling scraps and reusing product as well as the product recovery practices for used products would be beneficial to gather and evaluate. This would support to address the current trends and emerging practices.
Practical implications
Results highlighted interesting relationships and thus provide some answers on strategies adopted by many manufacturers for the sustainability approaches and implementations across different geographical regions (locations) as well as types and sizes of manufacturers. The wave of change towards sustainability is clearly on enterprises, industries, communities and governments for thinking about solutions to increase the awareness in environmental sustainability thus reduce carbon footprint. In some areas there is clear progress but for many, this process is just beginning.
Social implications
There is an overwhelming amount of information, methods and opinions, and proliferation of initiatives. It is in this climate that not only manufacturers but society must provide a practical and effective way to develop and disseminate the skills and knowledge required to fuel an environmentally sustainable economy. To achieve this, results of global surveys like this paper may support manufacturers who need to work with communities and stay well connected to their stakeholders. This may lead to developing training packages that accurately reflect industry needs and provide leadership in communities and workforce development.
Originality/value
There is generally an understanding of the sustainable product development and the use and role of tools and techniques to improve environmental performance of manufacturers at micro-level (within companies based on selected product, process, environmental tools and manufacturing characteristics). Whereas, a large-scale research like this paper, to present the status of sustainable product and process development approaches used by manufacturers located around the globe, of different sizes, types within existing operational and corporate strategies and eco-design initiatives have not been detailed.
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K. Jayakrishna, R. Jeya Girubha and S. Vinodh
The purpose of this paper is to present the comparison of sustainability characteristics of conventional and computer numerical control (CNC) turning process. The…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to present the comparison of sustainability characteristics of conventional and computer numerical control (CNC) turning process. The sustainability performance measures of both the processes were also being evaluated.
Design/methodology/approach
The study discusses the achievement of sustainability characteristics at the manufacturing process level of widely used industrial process, mechanical machining. Sustainable development includes improvements in material, product design and manufacturing process orientations. The present study narrates the sustainability characteristics at the process level.
Findings
The results confirm that the overall sustainability characteristics of CNC machining are potentially high considering the economic and environmental aspects of the machining parameters. A detailed life cycle analysis for both conventional and CNC turning was performed to evaluate the environmental impact and benefits.
Research limitations/implications
The study contributed in the paper is limited to process dimension of sustainability. The economic and environmental aspects of machining were also being discussed.
Practical implications
The conduct of the study enabled the comparison of sustainability characteristics of conventional and CNC-turning processes. The approach could also be expanded for the comparison of sustainability characteristics of other manufacturing processes also.
Originality/value
The study is an attempt to explore the process sustainability by the comparison of environmental impact of making processes. Hence, the contributions are original.
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Keywords
A.N. Mustafizul Karim, Saravanan Tanjong Tuan and H.M. Emrul Kays
The purpose of this paper is to address and solve operational problems of an automotive industry in reaching production target by adopting Maynard Operation Sequence…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to address and solve operational problems of an automotive industry in reaching production target by adopting Maynard Operation Sequence Technique (MOST) as lean and productivity improvement strategies.
Design/methodology/approach
In the undertaken case of auto-car rear window assembly line, a recurring production shortfall in fulfilling the daily demand is seemingly due to inappropriate work method. Initial observation of the operations led to suspect certain lapses in initiatives to adopt the time standards, to reduce or eliminate non-value added motions, to design suitable aisle and to assign tasks among workstations in a balanced manner. Subsequently an attempt is made to pinpoint the causes of poor performance and the bottlenecks through process flow analysis and time study by applying MOST. The elemental tasks are closely examined for possible reduction of workstation times by choosing efficient work methods with ergonomic features. Thus appropriate hand tools, jigs and fixture with nominal investment are prescribed to incorporate in the assembly works. The operational changes as steered by the MOST application have enhanced the workflow with a shorter cycle time which led to a substantial increase in productivity.
Findings
The productivity of the assembly line is increased by more than 29 percent from the earlier capacity through the MOST application which is deemed to meet the current level of demand.
Originality/value
The adopted framework for recognizing the effectiveness of MOST to expose and rectify the flaws in work methods without much investment is expected to be beneficial for a manufacturer in securing the competitiveness.
Details