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The European Union implemented the End-of-Life Vehicle directive to deal with an estimated 6 million end-of-life vehicles each year. Existing literature describe the processes to deal with the waste at end-of-life of different products but there is a lack of information on the costing of these options. These costs remain a concern to automotive manufacturers. This paper therefore reports the end-of-life costs of vehicle components and also demonstrates how these costs can be predicted at the design stage. The proposed approach should help to decide whether the automotive parts are viable for remanufacture, refurbishment, recycling, or disposal from an economic perspective. Two different automotive parts have been selected as case studies to validate the approach. Assumptions were made during the development of the technique and based on the results, the proposed approach could potentially provide vehicle manufacturers a method of estimating the cost of end-of-life recovery processes of vehicle components.

[EN] Concrete is the primary building material worldwide with a substantial impact on the built environment sustainability. Hence, it is necessary to assess concrete¿s combined functionality, economic and environmental impact. In this paper, two concrete sustainability assessment frameworks, MARS-SC and CONCRETop, were studied. Building on the identified gaps, a new framework, ECO2 was developed. ECO2 is a multi-criteria decision analysis framework that accounts for carbon sequestration of concrete, impact allocation of raw materials, and the impact from the use and end-of-life phases. Hence, it could be used to optimize the proportions of a concrete mix based on a user-defined sustainability objective. A case study concluded that, due to the whole life cycle scope, the environmental impact calculated through ECO2 is 20% higher than that by MARS-SC and CONCRETop. In case of reinforced concrete, where service life requirements are different, the ranking of the alternatives according to ECO2 will significantly change comparatively., The authors acknowledge no conflict of interest. This work is funded by the Faculty of Engineering and Environment's research development fund (RDF) at Northumbria University, UK.

This paper reports the development of a quantitative analysis system for selecting a greener and economically sustainable wind farm at the early design stage. A single wind turbine produces a limited amount of carbon emissions throughout its lifecycle. By taking a broader view, such as wind farms, collectively such an application would have a greater impact upon the environment and cost. Recent research on wind farms tends to focus on wind flow modelling to enable accurate prediction of power generation. Therefore, this paper presents a quantitative approach to predict a wind farm's lifetime (i) carbon emissions and intensity; (ii) potential energy production; (iii) return on investment and (iv) payback time from an early design perspective. The overall contribution of this work is to develop a quantitative approach to enable the selection of ‘greener’ designs for reducing the environmental impacts of a wind farm with hub heights between 44 m and 135 m while still considering its economic feasibility assessment. This newly developed system could potentially be used by top-management and engineers of wind turbine manufacturers and wind energy service providers for cleaner energy provision.

Virtual machining allows simulation of the machining process by realistically representing kinematic, static and dynamic behaviour of the intended machine tools. Using this method, manufacturing-related issues can be brought to light and corrected before the product is physically manufactured. Machining systems utilised in the manufacturing processes are represented in the virtual machining environment, and there is a plethora of commercial virtual machining software used in the industry. Each software system has a different focus and approach towards virtual machining; more than one system may be needed to complete machining verification. Thus, the significant increase in the use of virtual machining systems in the industry has increased the need for information reusability. Substantial time and money has been put into the research of virtual machining systems. However, very little of this research has been deployed within industrial best practice, and its acceptance by the end user remains unclear. This article reviews current research trends in the domain of virtual machining and also discusses how much of this research has been taken on board by software vendors in order to facilitate machine tool information reusability. The authors present use cases which utilise the novel concept of machining capability profile and the emerging STEP-NC compliant process planning framework for resource allocation. The use cases clearly demonstrate the benefits of using a neutral file format for representing machining capability profiles, as opposed to remodelling and/or reconfiguring of this information multiple times for different scenarios. This article has shown through the use cases that machining capability profiles are critical for representing recourse information from a kinematic, static and dynamic perspective that commercial software vendors can subsequently use. The impact of this on mainstream manufacturing industry is potentially significant as it will enable a true realisation of interoperability.

In this paper, a method for improving uncertainty estimates of embodied carbon and embodied energy is presented and discussed. Embodied energy and embodied carbon results are the focus of this analysis due to the fact that, at the conceptual design stage, these two are the most important quantities for decision making in life cycle assessment (LCA) studies. The use of renewable and new energy sources and the development of cleaner and more efficient energy technologies will play a major role in the sustainable development of a future energy strategy. Environmental protection, economic and social cohesion and diversification and security of energy supply are highlighted by the International Energy Agency as a high priority for the development of cleaner and more efficient energy systems and promotion of renewable energy sources. In the case studies presented, better results for the baseline turbine were observed compared to turbines with the proposed technology improvement opportunities. Embodied energy and embodied carbon results for the baseline turbine show an about 50 % probability that the turbine manufacturer may have lost the chance to reduce carbon emissions and 85 % probability that the turbine manufacturer may have lost the chance to reduce the primary energy consumed during its manufacture. The proposed approach is therefore a feasible alternative when more reliable results are desired for LCA-based design decision making.

The trend towards environmental sustainability has encouraged research to explore this new area in manufacturing. Part of the research effort is directed at identifying the drivers of this new development to understand how it is impacting traditional manufacturing. Government regulations, customer demand, and cost savings are amongst many drivers that have been identified. Research so far, however, represents merely the tip of the iceberg of a very complex phenomenon. A deeper understanding of the factors affecting these drivers is lacking. This study, therefore, aims to identify factors that support some sustainability drivers. This study has identified four key drivers and the factors that underlie them. For example, customer demand is a driver that was found to be influenced by underling factors such as the bargaining power of customers and the importance of environmentally-friendly products to win orders. Ten underlying factors are described and then analysed by conducting statistical tests that show their variation in a sample of manufacturing companies. Based on the principle that the control of variation could lead to potential improvements, these factors are ranked according to their variation in the sample. The novelty of this study is its attempt to provide deeper knowledge of what influence the strength of sustainability drivers by shedding light on the factors that underlie them. The approach used to rank the factors based on their variation is also unique and has the potential to be widely used to identify opportunities for improvements in other areas.

This paper describes the development of a quantitative analysis system as a platform for rapidly estimate energy, costs and carbon emission to facilitate the comparison of different wind turbine concept designs. This system aimed specifically at wind turbine manufacturing processes due to the fact that a large proportion of the environmental, costs and energy impacts would occur at this stage. The proposed method supports an initial assessment of multiple design concepts which allows the selection and development of a “greener” wind turbine. The developed system enables concept design of commercial wind turbine towers of hub heights between 44 and 135 m. The method supports an accurate estimation in regards to the dimension, energy consumed, maximum power output, costs and carbon emission in the early design phases of a wind turbine. As a result of the development, the proposed approach could potentially be used to minimise the carbon footprints of major engineering projects such as wind farms.

A UK government report released in 2017 indicated that fly ash (FA) production locally is expected to seize after 2021. This means that for the construction industry to meet its continuously increasing demand for an Ordinary Portland Cement (OPC) replacement, FA would probably need to be either imported or recovered from landfills through energy-intensive processes. Recent reports show that companies in the UK have already started importing FA from several countries from which Germany and China were chosen as case studies to exemplify the closest and furthest respectively. The environmental impact associated with the FA transportation raises concerns about the environmental sustainability of the final concrete product. Therefore, this study focuses on using a life cycle assessment (LCA) tool to analyse the environmental impact of importing FA from Germany and China and compare that to recovering landfilled FA in the UK. The study is the first of its kind to investigate the environmental impact of any of the alternatives. Using a Cradle-to-Gate approach and a mix of primary and secondary data, these alternatives were modelled and compared to conventional OPC and currently available locally sources of FA. Results show that the environmental burden from transporting FA from China to the UK will overcome the environmental benefits of it replacing OPC. It is then concluded that the most promising alternative for cleaner production of blended cement concrete is to recover the 50 million tonnes of landfilled FA from the UK using the Dry-processing technique explained in the study. The second best alternative is to import FA from a country within the Europe region to the UK.

This article presents a data modelling and a semi-automatic data searching method to support cost estimation in the product development process, particularly for low-volume, high-complexity and long-life products typified by defence products and systems. This article covers a literature review in the area of cost estimation in product development, the data sets needed to perform cost estimation, the method of modelling the data and the techniques of supporting cost data searching. The proposed method will be used to support cost estimation of product development decisions for defence electronic products. To compare with the traditional approach, the method has demonstrated that by creating a centralized environment such as the ‘databases and using a data-driven’ approach. The system is made more efficient by reducing the number of processes in carrying out cost estimation, and thus, this provides more information to make an informed concept design decision during the product development process based on the system’s competence of instant cost estimation feedback.

This paper reports on the investigation of an excavator mounted dust suppression system for demolition and construction activities. Ever increasing pressure is placed on contractors to improve their environmental performance, especially dust emissions. Current methods of dust suppression have been investigated and each of the methods has also been critically analysed to determine their advantages and disadvantages. The investigation also examined the requirements of such a system and a concept system proposal was produced. A working prototype has been constructed for a mini excavator complete with a hydraulic breaker. The proposed system was rigorously tested in various configurations to determine its efficiency and effectiveness in comparison with current suppression techniques. The resulting benefits such as the reduction of water usage and cost are highlighted.

Through-life costing (TLC) is a term used in cost estimation for costing a product from its conception to the end-of-life. However, there seems to be no common representation of the terminologies in the various stages of TLC. This paper reports the findings of research into TLC practices for defence electronic products and includes the terms and elements used in the TLC methods. The terminologies used for this research are adopted from the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO), including ISO 15288 and ISO 10303 Application Protocols 233 and 239. A TLC spectrum diagram representing how design information is inferred to support the application of top-down and bottom-up approaches is also discussed. A case study focused on the concept and the development stages of design is presented and is followed by suggestions on how the proposed method can be applied to the succeeding stages of manufacturing, in-service, and disposal.

This paper presents novel collaboration methods implemented using a centralized client/server product development integration architecture, and a decentralized peer-to-peer network for smaller and larger companies using open source solutions. The product development integration architecture has been developed for the integration of disparate technologies and software systems for the benefit of collaborative work teams in design and manufacturing. This will facilitate the communication of early design and product development within a distributed and collaborative environment. The novelty of this work is the introduction of an 'out-of-box' concept which provides a standard framework and deploys this utilizing a proprietary state-of-the-art product lifecycle management system (PLM). The term 'out-of-box' means to modify the product development and business processes to suit the technologies rather than vice versa. The key business benefits of adopting such an approach are a rapidly reconfigurable network and minimal requirements for software customization to avoid systems instability.

Recent literature in automotive research indicates that studies of the environmental impact mostly concern with metal-based components. Environmental effects are mainly analysed using “environmental performance indicators” and “life cycle assessment” techniques. Therefore a knowledge gap in the field of studying automotive plastic components should be conducted based on analysing material and manufacturing processes selection at the design stage. The research is focused on a plastic component previously unexplored and analyses it using tools that have not been employed for this application. A computer-aided tool was used to model the part and its associated sustainability function was used to analyse its environmental impact. The component was analysed using different materials and manufacturing processes, then redesigned to be more ergonomic. The improved component design was manufactured using rapid prototyping and a consumer preference survey was conducted to determine which component was preferred. The research found that by changing the material to high density polyethylene there would be approximately a 30% reduction in carbon footprint, 24% reduction in air acidification, 26% reduction in water eutrophication and 15% reduction in total energy consumption. Injection moulding is found to be the most sustainable manufacturing process.

Enterprises organised as distributed production networks face challenges related to the planning and synchronisation of their manufacturing operations, and of controlling the quality, cost and production time of products under development. Digital enterprise technology (DET) is a framework for new technologies which can shorten product development and realisation, by estimating and therefore controlling quality, cost and delivery factors for products at an early stage in their lifecycle. DET can also be deployed to facilitate planning and synchronisation of work across an extended enterprise. Particularly for high value and high complexity products, these techniques represent an emergent synthesis of strategies for design, manufacture and product lifecycle management.

The primary objective of the research was to investigate how disposal costs were being incurred in the domain of defence electronic systems by the Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) and subsequently to ascertain a novel approach to prediction of their end-of-life (EOL) costs. It is intended that the OEM could utilise this method as part of a full lifecycle cost analysis at the conceptual design stage. The cost model would also serve as a useful guide to aid decision making at the conceptual design stage, so that it may lead to the design of a more sustainable product in terms of recycling, refurbishment or remanufacture with the consideration of financial impact. The novelty of this research is that it identifies the significance of disposal costs from the viewpoint of the OEM and provides a generic basis for evaluation of all the major EOL defence electronic systems. A roadmap has been proposed and developed to facilitate the prediction of disposal costs and this will be used to determine a satisfactory solution of whether the EOL parts of a defence electronic system are viable to be remanufactured, refurbished or recycled from an early stage of a design concept. A selected defence electronic system is used as a case study. Based on the findings, the proposed method offers a manageable and realistic solution so that the OEM can estimate the cost of potential EOL recovery processes at the concept design stage.

The manufacturing industry faces many challenges such as reducing time-to-market and cutting costs. In order to meet these increasing demands, effective methods are need to support the early product development stages by bridging the gap of communicating early design ideas and the evaluation of manufacturing performance. This paper introduces methods of linking design and manufacturing domains using disparate technologies. The combined technologies include knowledge management supporting for product lifecycle management (PLM) systems, enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, aggregate process planning systems, workflow management and data exchange formats. A case study has been used to demonstrate the use of these technologies, illustrated by adding manufacturing knowledge to generate alternative early process plan which are in turn used by an ERP system to obtain and optimise a rough-cut capacity plan.