The present paper discusses the development and objectives of the DIANEpro project, which focuses on optimizing energy efficiency in industrial production processes. DIANEpro concentrates on the integration and optimized use of various energy flows through demand-response scenarios and the application of machine learning.

The requirements on the products and production processes within the manufacturing industry are continuously increasing according to environmental standards. The new requirements are coming from a growing awareness of what our planet can provide for example by the global challenge of climate change. The industry needs to reduce energy consumption and waste to meet the upcoming requirements. One of the processes with high environmental impact in a discrete manufacturing industry is the paint shop. Surface treatment is also of great importance to maintain a high quality product. In scientific literature, technological risk is one of the barriers in implementing environmental conscious manufacturing. Therefore the area of sustainable operations management needs building bridges with other functions and disciplines such as economics, strategies and behavioral sciences in order to manage the transitions. The supply of competence around paint shops today is usually provided by suppliers and other sources within the industry and to make the collaboration to work is essential. In this process of collaboration with external sources, substantial measurements are required to maintain the desirable quality. In order to ensure the competence of testing the quality eventuate when switching technology at a pre-treatment line, this report sets out to explore what the challenges to be taken into consideration are when to assure the product- and- process quality. To respond to this question, a multiple case study is conducted during spring 2016 where the phenomenon to study is the change process and the unit of analysis is the challenges that can be faced during the verification process. The case studied is automotive companies located in Sweden which are producing components for heavy duty vehicles. Data collection is performed by studying documents, participatory observations and semi-structured interviews. The results will give insights to academia on what challenges that are occurring during the verification process of implementing new and cleaner technologies. The conclusions are drawn upon the literature and the empirical results. The managerial implications are to increase the awareness of any potential barriers in the verification process in order to be prepared for managing the technological change process.

This thesis deals with the proposal that environmentally benign items of free standing furniture may be produced by the use of such well established techniques as training and grafting natural tree growth to shape. The project has been driven by the growing environmental concerns of which mankind has become aware in the late twentieth century, and which are starting to exert such a powerful influence in the twenty first. A broad history of man's use and control of natural tree growth, ranging geographically from Europe to Australia, and in size from hand held agricultural picks to eighteenth century sailing ships, is followed by a brief description of the ways in which the explosive increase in world popuanon. together with the expanding industrial activities of the Western consumer society, are feared to be threatening the stability of the natural environment. The various disasters and catastrophic accidents which have brought this situation to the attention of the general public are briefly surveyed, together with National, International and a range of Industrial responses. As one of the professions most closely concerned with the production of consumer items, the various reactions of the Design Community are similarly examined. In conclusion, the author's proposal for an experimental item of furnitureenvironmentally benign in production, use and disposal - is described and illustrated. A simple free standing three legged stool, the form of both the item itself and that of the jig required to control it's growth, are described and illustrated. The growth of examples of this, carried out on three sites across southern Britain are documented, experimental results reported and discussed. A further range of designs suitable to be produced using this method of controlling and grafting natural growth is proposed, and suggestions made for further experimentation.

This thesis deals with development of lean and green production systems from an action research point of view. The studies focus on Swedish-based automotive and vehicle industries and their aims to integrate sustainable thinking and environmental care into their operations management. Starting from operations management in manufacturing and corporate sustainable development, the research is built on how to integrate these two views into one production system. The systematic structure of a multiple-target improvement process with methodologies and tools designed to achieve the sustainability vision has been studied. Since lean as well as green production is based on the entire value chain, the research has gone beyond legal company limits and included the collaborative efforts between suppliers and customers in the value chain. The thesis includes six papers and describes approaches on how to implement integration, how to structure and integrate improvement management systems, how to set up an integrated monitoring and control system for the business and how to organise and redesign green lean tools and methodologies to support collaboration towards common targets. The results can be used for exploration and hypothesis formulation for further studies and development of integrated production systems and collaboration systems. The thesis helps answering how to integrate and implement company-specific green lean production systems.

Achieving sustainable production is a critical task in today’s globalised world. This is especially the case in the cotton garment industry where globally dispersed suppliers feed rapidly expanding demand across international markets. Practices associated with cotton garment production face numerous sustainability challenges from cotton farming to textile and garment manufacturing. Retailers are under increasing pressure to address these challenges and leading retailers are now actively trying to promote more sustainable production across all stages of production from raw material to final product. While numerous studies have investigated the relationship between retailers and their upper tier suppliers, there is little understanding of how sustainability challenges can be addressed across fragmented production processes. It is this gap that this thesis seeks to fill. Promoting sustainable production from raw materials to the final stages of manufacturing involves influencing practices of a diverse set of businesses responsible for different stages of production. This thesis defines the set of businesses that turn raw materials into final products as an ‘extended supplier network’ (ESN). Drawing on global value chain (GVC) and global production network (GPN) approaches to understanding how production is organised, the core question of this thesis is: To what extent is buyerdriven governance sufficient for promoting sustainable production across fragmented production processes in an ESN? GVC and GPN research provides insight into this issue as it offers a way to conceptualise how lead firms influence their suppliers. The GVC approach highlights the importance of lead buyers. The GPN approach incorporates this argument but further emphasises the importance of spatiality and the roles of a wider set of actors and processes. While both approaches theoretically incorporate all stages of production, garment industry studies using these approaches have tended to focus on relationships between brands and retailers and upper tier suppliers, paying insufficient attention to lower tiers. Considering the case of Indian cotton clothing production for major UK retailers, this study explores retailers’ governance relationships with producers at different points in their ESNs. Producers’ experiences of vertical governance through buyer-seller relationships across all stages of production within an ESN are explored. These producers’ experiences with horizontal governance within distinct local productive systems are also considered. Diverse producers’ locations within the ESN and within local productive systems are found to involve different governance experiences within the same ESN. Across the ESN, vertical governance flows are found to be limited by variation in potential for buyer governance across buyer-seller relationships in the multiple vertical pathways connecting retailers to raw material producers. Alternatively, retailers can connect to producers by making non-sourcing horizontal connections with actors in local productive systems. While dominant methods in retailers’ efforts at governance for sustainability have been vertical, horizontal connections are increasing across the industry. However, despite the emergence of new connections, this research finds that retailers’ influence over lower tier production processes remains limited. Empirically, this thesis provides insight into the complexity of sustainability challenges involved in the production of cotton garments. Conceptually, it shows the nature of diverse governance relationships across an ESN. It also emphasises that effective governance for sustainability cannot be achieved simply through vertical buyerdriven governance. Instead a more nuanced, and more complex, understanding of the interplay between vertical and horizontal is required, particularly considering the role of alliances. This has significant implications for policy, including the public and private governance for sustainability in the global cotton garment industry.

The biotechnology revenues in the United States exceeded $100 billion in 2010 and the potential impact of synthetic biological engineering has been identified nationally as an emerging technology to further expand the national bioeconomy. Synthetic biological engineering approaches biology from an engineering perspective to make biology easier to engineer. The potential to engineer microorganisms for novel applications can have far-reaching implications and benefits for society. Some of the potential applications range from biosensors, biofuels, therapeutics, and biomaterials. In this study two biomaterials were produced in genetically engineered Escherichia coli: polyhydroxybutyrates (PHBs) and spider silk. PHBs are bioplastics that have similar properties to petrochemical-derived plastics. Synthetic biological engineering can be used to optimize PHB extraction from E. coli by secretion of the PHB polymer outside of the cell. Another biomaterial, spider silk, was also produced in E. coli. Spider silk is a unique material with high tensile strength and elasticity and thus could have a wide range of potential applications. Since spider silk is not naturally produced in microorganisms, the DNA sequences were optimized for increased production in E. coli. In addition to optimization of bioproduct production in microorganisms using synthetic biology, another major cost is the carbon substrate. In this study wastewater microalgae were used as an alternative carbon substrate. Coupling synthetic biological engineering and sustainable engineering could potentially make production of bioproducts economically viable in the future.

<p>U radu se proučava kvalitet vazduha pod pritiskom iz aspekta održive proizvodnje. Zahtevani kvalitet vazduha postiže se primenom filtera<br />i sušača. Filteri vazduha izazivaju pad pritiska, koji ako se smanji,<br />smanjuje se i ukupna količina proizvedenog vazduha pod pritiskom, čime<br />se povećava energetska efikasnost. Utvrđuje se povezanost primene<br />različitih filtera i pada pritiska, uz poštovanje kvaliteta vazduha.<br />Osim toga, analiziran je kondenzat, koji se pri filtraciji javlja u<br />sistemu, i kreirane su odgovarajuće preporuke za njegovo odlaganje, jer<br />se on svrstava u opasan otpad zbog prisustva ulja.</p> / <p>This paper examines the quality of compressed air from the aspect of<br />sustainable production. The required air quality is achieved by using filters<br />and dryers. Air filters generate the pressure drop, which, if reduced, reduces<br />the total volume of produced compressed air, which lead to increase in<br />energy efficiency. Connections between the application of different filters and<br />pressure drops with respect to quality are explored. In addition, the<br />condensate from the compressed air system is analysed, and appropriate<br />recommendations for its disposal are created because it is classified as<br />hazardous waste due to the presence of oil.</p>

Um estudo de viabilidade foi desenvolvido com o objetivo de verificar a economicidade de um sistema de produção de ciclo completo de pecuária de bovinos de corte, sob alta lotação. O sistema foi inicialmente concebido para a utilização em pesquisas na Faculdade de Medicina Veterinária e Zootecnia da Universidade de São Paulo, sendo que esta dissertação buscou avaliar a viabilidade econômica de tal sistema quando aplicado à pecuária comercial. Para tanto foram utilizados dez cenários, nove dos quais definidos a partir da variação de preços dos produtos vendidos, utilização de capital próprio e recursos de financiamento rural via programa do Banco Nacional de Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social (BNDES). O décimo cenário utilizado foi definido a partir de um nível pré-determinado de preço dos produtos vendidos e utilização de capital próprio, decorrente de arrendamento de área liberada a partir da intensificação do sistema de produção. O método de análise econômica utilizado foi o de Fluxo de Caixa e as técnicas aplicadas foram: Payback Simples, Payback Descontado, Valor Presente Líquido (VPL) e Taxa Interna de Retorno (TIR). O sistema mostrou-se economicamente viável estritamente para os cenários que consideraram o nível máximo de projeção de preços da arroba da carne e para o cenário que considerou o arrendamento de área liberada a partir da intensificação do sistema de produção. A utilização de financiamento via Programa de Crédito Rural do BNDES proporcionou melhora expressiva nos valores monetários e índices utilizados na análise. / A study was carried out to verify the economic viability of a life-cycle production system of beef cattle under high stocking. This system was initially designed for use in research at the school of Veterinary Medicine and Animal Science, Universidade São Paulo, but this dissertation tried to evaluate the economic viability of this system when applied to commercial livestock. Therefore, ten scenarios were studied. Nine of them were determined by the variation of prices of products, use of own capital and resources from rural finance programs from Banco Nacional de Desenvolvimento Ecônomico e Social (BNDES). The tenth scenario was based on a predetermined level of prices of products and use of own capital, due to leasing of the area released from the intensification of the production system. The analysis method was the Cash Flow and the applied techniques were: Simple Payback, Discounted Payback, Net Present Value (NPV) and Internal Rate of Return (IRR). The system showed to be economically viable for the scenarios that considered the maximum projection of meat prices and for the scenario that considered the leasing area related to the intensification of the production system. Funding from BNDES Rural Credit Program has provided significant improvement in the monetary values and indices used in the analysis.

Leading cocoa-consuming countries have declared that in the year 2020, they will permit imports of sustainably sourced cocoa beans only, threatening the sustainability of the cocoa farming business. Certification offers enhanced market access for sustainability of the business of cocoa bean producers in Ghana. The purpose of this case study was to explore the strategies that farm managers used to obtain certification for cocoa bean production. Seven farm managers of a cocoa producer's cooperative located in the eastern region of Ghana who consistently produced certified cocoa beans for at least 5 years participated in the study. Deming's quality management theory served as the conceptual framework for this study. Semistructured interviews constituted the primary technique for data collection. Additional data from UTZ-certified documents and the archives of the cooperative supported the process of achieving data saturation. Data were analyzed using Bengtsson's manifest content analysis framework of decontextualization, recontextualization, categorization, and compilation to arrive at conclusions. Three themes emerged from data analysis: training in farming practices and certification code of conduct, management discipline, and environmental and social sustainability. The implications of this study for social change include the potential that certification might influence a positive change in the farming practices of Ghanaian cocoa farm managers. Social change might be reflected in the adoption of sustainable production practices, improved living conditions of producers, and biodiversity conservation.

The notion of sustainability has become an extensive area of research ever since the term emerged in the late 1980s, due to the negative effects of unsustainable production and consumption patterns on environmental stewardship, social equity and economic development. There have been various approaches developed for product design and education within the context sustainability. Biomimicry is one of those approaches, and its implications for product design education have recently started to be explored. In this study, an educational tool - Biomimicry Sketch Analysis (BSA) - was developed and integrated into the idea-generation phase of an educational design project at the undergraduate level in the Department of Industrial Design at the Middle East Technical University (METU). This integration is analyzed throughout the graduate thesis study, to understand and explore the implications of the biomimicry approach for sustainability in product design education. The educational tool within this approach was found as influential among the third year industrial design students for the idea-generation phase, yet the results of this study included both pros and cons for the incorporation of the BSA exercise.