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LCA to support decision-making in layout designs

Introduction
The economic impact of environmental regulations in the manufacturing sector and the increasing costs of primary resources have pressured companies wishing to obtain competitive advantages to seek ways to rationalize these resources, either through changes in products specifications or in manufacturing process. These actions depend on solutions that should consider the limits set out in the interdependencies between economic, environmental and social areas, which comprise the so-called sustainability tripod. In this case, the guiding principle for decisions should follow the approach of sustainable development. For this purpose, a proper performance indicators evaluation of processes is a great step to improvement actions and decision making for modifications. Continuous improvement approaches and support of mathematical tools, such as the Discrete Event Simulation (DES) have been used for identifying waste on the shop floor and for cost analyses for manufacturing optimization (Standridge et al. 2006). One of the advantages resulting from the application of DES in corporations is its capability to include the impact of randomness in a system. All the dynamics and the non-deterministic nature of the parameters eliminate the use of static tools such as spreadsheets for solving many line design problems. Furthermore, all commercial simulation software provides detailed animation capabilities. The animation of the manufacturing process and flow can help engineers to visually detect problems or bottlenecks and also to test out alternate line designs. For this reason, the DES may be applied to generate requirements and sustainable systems specifications for manufacturing. However, the analyses results performed by using DES are not sufficient for the joint assessment of impacts on the three dimensions of sustainability (Johansson et al. 2010; Kuhl & Zhou 2009; Joschko et al. 2009).
A tool widely used in the academic environment and by corporations to calculate pollutant emissions rates in the product life cycle is Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). This can supplement cost assessments performed with DES in the production process phase. This work discusses the combined use of DES with LCA to analyze production resources utilization in manufacturing systems. Towards this end, it seeks through a case study to analyze this joint use in decision-making for purchasing forklifts, according to sustainable premises.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:DRESDEN/oai:qucosa.de:bsz:14-qucosa-228864
Date28 September 2017
CreatorsGomes, Victor Emmanuel, Barba Junior, Durval João de, Gomes, Jefferson de Oliveira, Grote, Karl-Heinrich
ContributorsTUDpress - Verlag der Wissenschaften GmbH,
PublisherSaechsische Landesbibliothek- Staats- und Universitaetsbibliothek Dresden
Source SetsHochschulschriftenserver (HSSS) der SLUB Dresden
Languagedeu
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typedoc-type:conferenceObject
Formatapplication/pdf
SourceRieg, Frank, Feldhusen, Jörg, Stelzer, Ralph, Grote, Karl-Heinrich, Brökel, Klaus, Hrsg., 2012. Entwerfen Entwickeln Erleben 2012 - Methoden und Werkzeuge in der Produktentwicklung-10. Gemeinsames Kolloquium Kontruktionstechnik KT2012: Residenzschloss Dresden, 14.-15. Juni 2012. Dresden: TUDpress - Verlag der Wissenschaften GmbH. S. 665-676. ISBN: 978-3-942710-80-0

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