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Sustainable manufacturing is crucial to achieving carbon neutrality targets. However, research on the sustainability of manufacturing systems is limited, and high consumption, low efficiency, and high emissions have resulted in high resource consumption and rapid environmental degradation. Therefore, it is of great importance to establish an evaluation and improvement indicator system conducive to sustainable development. To this end, this study developed a data-driven methodology for evaluating and enhancing the sustainability of manufacturing systems. Manufacturing system production process data, with data dimensions unified via the emergy method, were used to construct a sustainable development evaluation model that includes four perspectives: economy, environment, society, and sustainability. The model was applied to a flange production workshop in China to analyze the interrelation mechanisms among energy consumption, resource consumption, and environmental pollution, and identify optimization schemes to improve sustainability. After implementing these optimization schemes, the emergy yield rate (EYR) of the flange increased by 23.40%, the environmental load rate (ELR) decreased by 19.03%, the per capita emergy (EPP) increased by 6.88%, and the emergy-based sustainability index (ESI) increased by 52.76%. The method presented herein offers a novel and effective tool to analyze and visualize sustainable development in manufacturing systems and identify the relationship between technology and management in the manufacturing industry; however, this method is based on historical data and rules, and lacks of flexible response to unknown situations. The results provide a reference for enterprises to achieve sustainable and lean manufacturing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Remanufacturing is one of the most effective ways to deal with the current global waste crisis; moreover, it can improve the production and resource efficiency of remanufacturing, which is an urgent need for global sustainable development. Therefore, in this study, a data-driven intelligent control system is proposed to improve the production and resource efficiency of remanufacturing assembly systems. An optimization model of the reassembly scheme is constructed to minimize quality loss and comprehensive cost. Then, based on the data acquisition and processing technology, the remanufacturing parts are measured, grouped, and coded, and the dimensional chain calculated. Then, a control method, which is a real-time monitoring and dynamic compensation response to abnormal quality, is proposed to achieve intelligent control of the remanufacturing assembly process. Moreover, some data-driven technologies of intelligent control systems that include information perception and fusion technology and real-time monitoring and dynamic compensation architecture are researched and implemented. Lastly, the intelligent control prototype system is used in a remanufacturing engine assembly workshop. Both theoretical and experimental results demonstrate that the data-driven intelligent control system in remanufacturing assembly is effective, thus providing a method and technical support for production and resource efficiency in reassembly systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The low-carbon transformation of manufacturing enterprises is considered to be imperative to achieve carbon neutrality. Therefore, we propose a data-driven strategy to achieve a low-carbon transformation of manufacturing enterprises from an eco-efficiency perspective. Following the collection of input (energy, materials, equipment, R&D, and services) and output (waste and products) data from production systems of manufacturing enterprises, an ecological efficiency model of manufacturing enterprise production system was constructed from the perspective of carbon emissions, thus allowing the quantitative evaluation of the ecological efficiency of the production system. Furthermore, a "measurable, evaluable, and optimized" low-carbon transformation and upgrading method for manufacturing enterprise production system was established. Finally, through the production practice data of an enterprise from 2017 to 2021, the feasibility and effectiveness of this method were verified. The results show that this method can effectively improve the ecological efficiency of enterprises by 3.6% and reduce waste emissions by 12%. Our study provides new tools for improving the ecological efficiency of manufacturing systems, along with theoretical and methodological support to manufacturing enterprises for low-carbon transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The integration of information technologies with the industry has marked the beginning of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and has promoted the development of industrial engineering. Evaluation of Sustainable Supply Chains in Industrial Engineering Huang et al. [[6]] reviewed the literature on the risk management of automotive supply chain interruption in recent years, listed the achievements in automotive supply chain interruption risk management, pointed out the problems in automotive supply chain management, and discussed the most concerned areas and development trends in automotive supply chain management. We believe that integrating information technology and industry can promote sustainable supply chain development and accelerate the achievement of carbon neutrality goals in the manufacturing industry in the future [[18]]. Sustainable Supply Chain Design and Management Gong et al. [[1]] established game models for a live-streaming supply chain and found optimal strategies for live-streaming members on streaming marketing modes, prices, and carbon emission reduction efforts. [Extracted from the article]

In this article, we propose a data-driven remanufacturability evaluation method for the waste parts considering uncertainty. First, the remanufacturing cost and remanufacturing profit functions based on the Taguchi quality concept are established. Subsequently, the back propagation neural network is applied for the parameter estimation to deal with the multivariable, uncertain, and nonlinear effects of remanufacturing machining. Moreover, the improved particle swarm optimization algorithm is used to efficiently optimize the remanufacturing value for waste parts. This article develops the remanufacturability evaluation model of waste parts considering remanufacturing processing capacity and quality loss. Through a case study of waste crankshafts, we show a particular application of the proposed data-driven remanufacturability evaluation method. This article provides a new and effective tool for remanufacturing production management and could assist both practitioners and policymakers in developing practical lean remanufacturing methods, promoting the sustainable development of the remanufacturing industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to improve the quality of remanufacturing assembly with uncertainty for the sustainability of remanufacturing industry, an error propagation model of the remanufacturing assembly process and its optimal control method are established. First, the state space model of error propagation is established by taking the work-in-process parameter errors of each process as the initial state of the procedure and the parameters of remanufactured parts and operation quantities as the input. Then, the quality control issue of remanufacturing assembly is transformed into a convex quadratic programming with constraints based on this model. Finally, the proposed method is used to control the remanufactured-crankshaft assembly quality. The experimental results show that the axial-clearance consistency and the crankshaft torque are improved, and the one-time assembly success rate of a remanufactured crankshaft is increased from 96.97%to 99.24%. This study provides a theoretical model and method support for the quality control of remanufacturing assembly and has a practical effect on improving the quality of remanufactured products. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Additive manufacturing (AM) can be used to fabricate products with complex shapes that cannot be realized with traditional manufacturing. However, when manufacturing large metal components, AM is constrained by extended production cycles and reduced efficiency, leading to substantial resource usage and environmental impacts. To clarify the environmental impact and sustainability (EIS) of AM systems and improve their resource utilization and economic benefits, an emergy-based approach was proposed. Initially, the scope and boundary of the approach are defined, and the methodology and preparatory steps are detailed. Subsequently, emergy models for sustainability evaluation are established, including factors such as production time, quality, resource use, costs, and economic performance. A comprehensive evaluation is conducted to determine the relevant indices. The results of the evaluation of three distinct AM processes reveal that resource and energy utilization in AM systems contribute approximately 50% of the environmental impact. To mitigate the environmental impact of AM systems and improve their sustainability, reducing the energy consumption of AM systems is indicated as an effective strategy. Our method quantitatively evaluates the EIS of AM, providing a basis for informed decision-making to reduce environmental impact while enhancing production efficiency and economic benefits. • Emergy-based method to assess sustainability of additive manufacturing (AM) proposed. • It provides a unified model for the integration of quality, cost, time, energy, and materials. • It unifies different performance index measures of AM systems. • A comprehensive evaluation of different AM processes was conducted. • It provides an analytical basis for a circular economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Compared to the original product, the quality of remanufactured products has higher uncertainty, resulting in lower customer purchase willingness and market acceptance. It has been considered as a bottleneck for the sustainable development of the remanufacturing industry. In response, this study aims to propose strategies that can enhance the quality of remanufactured goods, thereby stimulating consumer demand and fostering the growth of the remanufacturing sector. To achieve this objective, a two-stage model incorporating the original manufacturer, remanufacturer, and retailer was formulated, with a particular emphasis on carbon -neutral objectives. The study explores the impact of the government's dual policy, encompassing cap-and-trade mechanisms and subsidies, on the quality-linked strategies adopted by remanufacturing enterprises. A comparative analysis was conducted to evaluate the effects of different government subsidy approaches, considering scenarios without subsidies, subsidies to consumers, and subsidies to enterprises, all contingent on carbon emissions from enterprises. The findings of our analysis revealed that, under carbon emission limits, an increase in the government subsidy coefficient linked to carbon emissions effectively heightens consumers' willingness to purchase remanufactured products. This, in turn, leads to an improvement in the overall quality of remanufactured goods and an expansion of the remanufacturing industry. Notably, the impact of combining government subsidies with carbon allowance trading varies, with subsidies proving more advantageous for improving the economic and environmental efficiency of the manufacturing process as well as enhancing consumer surplus and social welfare within the industry under specific conditions of subsidy amounts and carbon emissions. The proposed model's validity and reliability were affirmed through arithmetic simulations. In conclusion, this study presents a novel strategy aimed at improving the quality of remanufactured goods, fostering customer purchase intention, and generating a combination of economic, environmental, and social benefits for enterprises. The findings of this research offer valuable insights for the development of low-carbon legislation, serving as a guide for policymakers in the quest for sustainable manufacturing practices. [Display omitted] • Remanufactured product quality, purchase intention, and carbon emission correlate. • Government policies affect remanufacturing enterprises' economic, environmental, and social benefits. • Government's dual policy of cap-and-trade and subsidies affects willingness to pay, product quality, and industry size. • The study provides a reference to formulate low-carbon policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The remanufacturing machining has been recognized as an effective technology that helps improving the energy and materials utilization, and resulting environmental emissions and production costs decrease. Due to the intense lack of sustainability evaluation, therefore, this paper presents a novel emergy based evaluation method considering these objects in the remanufacturing machining systems. On basis of analyzing the remanufacturing machining and sustainability, this method comprises data collection, emergy based sustainability evaluation model and development of sustainable evaluation indexes and systems. Meanwhile, this method translates the quality loss function, time loss function, and cost into emergy by the Emdollar value, and calculates the emergy value of the environmental losses caused by the energy and resources used in remanufacturing machining process and its waste. Finally, the results of the remanufacturing crankshaft machining show that the remanufacturing machining system possesses high production efficiency and return with heavy environmental load state, and the sustainability index is less than 0.05. There is considerable potential for utilizing the energy and alloy powders of the remanufacturing technologies. This study contributes to studying sustainability modeling of remanufacturing to evaluate machining process and to optimize remanufacturers and manufacturers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How to maximize the use of remanufactured parts with variable quality grade and improve the precision of reassembly (remanufacturing assembly) is the key to reassembly quality control. Firstly, based on analyzing the characteristics of reassembly for complex mechanical product, an assembly process control method of remanufactured product with different quality grade is proposed. Optimization model of reassemble scheme was constructed, which can describe the transmission process and the status of assembly precision in each assembly station, and characterize the relationship between assembly precision and remanufactured parts with various quality grades. Then, the solution is given by genetic algorithm, which can respond to abnormal quality situation during reassembly process and realize optimal control for reassembly process. Finally, a quality control of a prototype system for the remanufactured engine assembly is developed, which shows the feasibility and validity of the proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Numerous pathways and narratives have been developed to shed light on how society could transform its production systems in line with the aspirational targets of the Paris Agreement and Sustainable Development Goals. Zhang et al. [[10]] address a coincineration scheme for mixing multi-component wastes in a rotary kiln for waste disposal from pesticide production. Zhang et al. [[4]] present a literature review on reverse logistics (RL) supplier selection in terms of criteria and methods and propose a three-stage typology of decision-making frameworks to understanding RL supplier selection. This Special Issue on "Green Technologies for Production Processes" will focus on publishing original research works about Green Technologies for Production Processes, including discrete production processes and process production processes, from various aspects that tackle product, process, and system issues in production. [Extracted from the article]

Optimized control of remanufacturing assembly process in a dynamic and uncertain environment has been recognised as a big challenge for remanufacturer. Therefore, an integrated optimization control method for reassembly system is proposed. The state space model of the remanufacturing assembly process and the transfer matrix of reassembly are constructed to characterize the transfer mechanism of reassembly process. Then, an optimization control model based on dynamic programming is established to realize online guidance of reassembly station. Finally, the method is applied in reassembly line of crankshaft remanufacturing, and the feasibility and effectiveness are verified. The results show that this method can effectively improve the quality of remanufactured products by 5.27%, and reduce the cost of reassembly system by 2.76%. Moreover, the method provides theoretical and methodological support for the core competitiveness of remanufacturing enterprises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to quantitatively evaluate and improve the sustainability of machining systems, this paper presents an emergy (the amount of energy consumed in direct and indirect transformations to make a product or service) based sustainability evaluation and improvement method for machining systems, contributing to the improvement of energy efficiency, resource efficiency and environmental performance, and realizing the sustainability development. First, the driver and challenge are studied, and the scope and hypothesis of the sustainable machining system are illustrated. Then, the emergy-based conversion efficiency model is proposed, which are (1) effective emergy utilization rate (EEUR), (2) emergy efficiency of unit product (EEUP) and (3) emergy conversion efficiency (ECE), to measure and evaluate the sustainable machining system from the perspectives of energy, resource and environment. Finally, the proposed model is applied to a vehicle-bridge machining process, and the results show that this paper provides the theoretical and method support for evaluating and improving the sustainable machining processes to decouple the resources and development of the manufacturing industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Additive manufacturing (AM) has significant advantages, including design freedom, mass customization, and complex-structure manufacturing capabilities. As reducing the manufacturing energy is challenging in terms of the industrial sustainability, the AM energy consumption must be further explored. Existing energy consumption quantitation methods for AM require complex models that considering the energy characteristics of equipment. Therefore, we propose a feature-based energy consumption quantitation method for complex AM parts using simple models and suitable for different AM technologies. First, a feature segmentation method is proposed to divide complex AM parts into typical AM features. Then, the energy consumption model for each AMF is developed for energy consumption quantification during part fabrication. Finally, the energy consumption of a typical mechanical part manufactured via three different AM processes is investigated using the proposed method and measured experimentally. The results show that the proposed method can effectively and rapidly predict the energy consumption of AM processes with an accuracy of more than 95 %. Furthermore, the efficiency of the three AM processes is compared and discussed to address suitable efficiency improvement methods. In general, the proposed method can be integrated into three-dimensional AM models, providing a reference for the structural optimization of AM parts and sustainable manufacturing. • A feature-based energy consumption method for complex AM parts is proposed • The proposed method uses simple models and is suitable for various AM technologies • Feature dissection is employed to divide AM parts into typical AM features • The proposed method predicts energy consumed in AM parts effectively and accurately [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Remanufacturing is becoming a strategic emerging industry in China. However, there are many uncertain factors such as remanufacturing rate of recycling products, reprocessing costs, quantity of recycling products during a remanufacturing process. Hence, it is difficult to make an accurate production planning. This paper aims at studying a new remanufacturing production planning model in view of some possible uncertain factors in a remanufacturing enterprise according to the features and characteristics of remanufacturing. Considering the production capacity constraint of recycling, reprocessing and reassembly under the condition of uncertain reprocessing amount, unpredictable reprocessing cost, unknown purchase volume of new parts, and uncertain customer demand, this paper develops a two-stage, multi-period hybrid programming model with compensation function based on uncertainty theory to minimize the total remanufacturing cost. A hybrid intelligent algorithm is designed combined with compensation function approximation, neural network training, and virus particle algorithm to optimize this two-stage uncertain remanufacturing production planning. By use of compensation function approximation method, it is to convert an infinite optimization problem in this algorithm into that of a finite one. Finally, one remanufacturing simulation case is studied to validate the efficiency and rationality of the proposed approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Remanufactured mechanical products with high-added value are generally claimed to gain environmental benefits. These claims were made based on different products and assessment methodologies. The variability of life cycle assessment (LCA) results precludes a meaningful comparison across products and studies. This paper aims to critically and systematically evaluate the lifecycle environmental performance of remanufactured products compared with their new counterparts and to identify the key factors, strengths, and limitations in the assessment procedure. Faced with the noteworthy variations, we closely examined and harmonized the unit function, allocation approach, system boundary, impact assessment method, and the underlying assumptions in screened 20 papers regarding 11 types of products. The environmental indicators adopted in this study were global warming potential (GWP) and primary energy consumption (PEC). In terms of these two indicators, the environmental burdens of remanufactured products relative to newly manufactured alternatives were harmonized to the comparison ratios. With these harmonized samples, descriptive statistics were calculated using Monte Carlo Simulation to disclose the variations of comparison results and identify the general tendency. Results of this meta-study showed that remanufacturing could contribute to over 50% reduction for GWP when usage and end-of-life stages were excluded from the life cycle. The GWP and PEC of remanufactured mechanical products account for 28.5% and 25.9% of the new counterparts, respectively, on average. This meta-analysis of comparative LCAs on new and remanufactured products would advance the understanding of the environmental advantages of remanufacturing. • Meta analysis was performed on the comparison of new and remanufactured products. • Variation in the calculations of life cycle impact was harmonized. • Remanufactured products cause over 50% reduction in Global Warming Potential. • The key factors and limitations in the screened papers were identified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The shortage of resources and environmental pollution have become the social issues of world concern, they have seriously affected the sustainable development. Remanufacturing has been recognized as an effective technology helps to improve the energy and materials utilization, and reduce environmental emissions with a low cost. we performed a comprehensive literature review of assessing energy, environment, and economy in remanufacturing based on life cycle assessment method to summarize the development of remanufacturing technologies, conclude new progress of remanufacturing in energy, environment and economy and review the remanufacturing trend. Firstly, we reviewed the life cycle assessment (LCA) method and its application in remanufacturing assessment. Some remanufacturing assessment methods based on LCA were analyzed here. Secondly, a framework of assessing energy, environment, and economy in remanufacturing based on LCA was built. Corresponding assessment methods in remanufacturing were studied and summarized in dimensions of energy, environment and economy respectively. Then following the integrated studies of energy-environment-economic assessment in remanufacturing was also described. In this paper, the remanufacturing and assessment about energy, environment, economy based on LCA were described systematically, so as to better understand and apply LCA and promote remanufacturing. Finally, the limitations of the LCA method were discussed, furthermore, in order to catch up with the trend of the manufacturing industry, the integration of remanufacturing and emerging technologies was proposed at the end of the paper, which will be conducive to the continuous innovation of remanufacturing. • Reviewing the life cycle assessment method and its application in remanufacturing assessment. • Illustrating energy, environment and economic assessment methods in remanufacturing. • Performing integrated studies of energy-environment-economic assessment in remanufacturing. • Discussing the emerging technologies or methods of remanufacturing from the energy, environment and economic perspectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]