Synonyms

Clean production; Corporate social responsibility; Green manufacturing

Definition

Sustainable manufacturing has been defined by the International Trade Administration under the US Department of Commerce as “…the creation of manufactured products that use processes that minimize negative environmental impacts, conserve energy and natural resources, are safe for employees, communities, and consumers and are economically sound” (USDOC 2012). The US National Council for Advanced Manufacturing (NACFAM) contrasts this definition with the UN definition of a sustainable development given in the Brundtland report as a “Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” and extends the definition to address both the manufacturing of “sustainable” products and the sustainable manufacturing of all products, taking into account the full sustainability life cycle issues related to the products manufactured (NACFAM 2012).

The double focus on both manufacturing activities and the life cycle of the products that are being manufactured is also found in the sustainable production element in the concept of sustainable production and consumption that is being promoted by international institutions like the United Nations (UNEP 2013) and the European Union (Council of the European Union 2008) as a central element in strategies for the development toward a sustainable society.

Theory and Application

The absolute form used in the term sustainable manufacturing is potentially misleading unless it is clearly defined. What is truly sustainable, i.e., an activity that we will be able to sustain indefinitely, depends very much on the context in which the activity is performed, in terms of, e.g.:

  • The total population of the earth whose needs must be met today as well as in the future

  • The equity among the people of the earth and the material level at which they wish to fulfill their needs

  • The available resource base for the resources that are critical in terms of availability (today as well as in the future with the changes in demand and availability that can be foreseen)

  • The state of the environment in terms of distances to critical pollution levels affected by the manufacturing activity (today as well as in the future)

Classification of a manufacturing activity as sustainable in absolute terms hence requires a number of strong assumptions in order to be substantiated and meaningful.

For practical purposes, it is often more relevant to talk about the sustainability of manufacturing in relative terms, i.e., as one form of manufacturing being more sustainable (or green) than another, both in terms of the manufacturing practice and in terms of the products that it manufactures. The relative environmental sustainability of a product is also represented by its eco-efficiency, the product with the highest eco-efficiency being the most environmentally sustainable among the compared products. It may, however, not actually be sustainable in the absolute sense.

Conflicts Between Relative and Absolute Sustainability of Manufacturing

While relative sustainability of products or their manufacturing is more operational in many situations, there is a potential conflict between increasing the relative environmental sustainability and moving toward absolute environmental sustainability (Hauschild 2015). The conflict may arise when the consumption aspect is ignored in the sustainability assessment, and there is a positive feedback coupling between an increase in the relative environmental sustainability or eco-efficiency and the consumption. In these cases, what seems to be sustainable from a manufacturing perspective turns out not to be so when assessed at the societal level.

An example is offered by the case of automotive person transport in Europe where the increase in fuel efficiency over the last decade is an accomplishment of the automotive manufacturing that has clearly made passenger cars more environmentally sustainable. It has, however, also made personal mobility via private cars more affordable and hence led to an increase of the total transport work which has more than neutralized the improvements in fuel efficiency. The net result is an increase in the environmental impacts from person transport and hence a development away from the environmental sustainability of this sector, sometimes referred to as the “rebound effect” (Clark 2007).

Another example is offered by the example of indoor lighting for which the energy efficiency (which here serves as a proxy for environmental sustainability) has increased by more than three orders of magnitude over the last centuries going from candles via incandescent bulbs to diode-based lighting. Also here, the improvements in energy efficiency have been accompanied by an increase in economic efficiency, leading to increases in the use of lighting that have neutralized the energy efficiency gains, again showing that an increase in relative environmental sustainability does not alone lead us in the direction of a sustainable society (Gutowski 2011). Along the same vein, LCD screens offer a more eco-efficient alternative to the old CRT technology, providing a similar functionality (screen size, image quality) at lower environmental impact. However, the enabling LCD technology also supports the construction of much larger screens, so the improvement in eco-efficiency is countered by an increase in the size of TV and PC screens (Kim et al. 2014).

Therefore, the manufacturing industry must consider not only the environmental impact of products during the product design now but also future technology change and the anticipated market growth in order to qualify claims of sustainability (Kim and Kara 2012; Kim et al. 2014).

The relationship between eco-efficiency, consumption, and environmental impact is reflected by the I = PAT equation that expresses the environmental impact I as a product of the size of the human population P, the material standard of living or affluence A (the value that is created or consumed per capita), and the technology factor T, often expressed as the reciprocal of the eco-efficiency (impact per created value). Considering the growth in population (P) and the economic development and increase in material standard of living (A) and resource use in many parts of the world and considering the fact that the current level of impact (I) is not sustainable for many types of environmental impact, there is a need to increase the eco-efficiency by which we provide technological services by a factor of 10–20 over the next 40 years in order to ensure a sustainable production (von Weizsäcker et al. 1998; Schmidt-Bleek 2008; Hauschild et al. 2005). This macro level need trickles down to the meso level of manufacturing as a daunting challenge. But as the examples given above illustrate, even such high increases in eco-efficiency may not lead to sustainable production when A and T are not mutually independent, so a reduction in T (an increase in eco-efficiency) triggers a growth in A that more than outbalances it resulting in an overall increase in environmental impact I (Pogutz and Micale 2011).

All these examples also stress the need to consider the whole life cycle of the technology or product to address the use versus manufacturing stage trade-off. Things that do not move or need power to operate like bridges, furniture, etc. are dominantly manufacturing-stage consumers of resources and, by extension, impact. Things that do move and need power to operate like automobiles, airplanes, etc. are generally use-stage heavy. If the use stage dominates, efforts to reduce consumption (meaning giving the consumer products that deliver the required functionality or service but at a lower environmental impact or energy/resource consumption) are appropriate. If the manufacturing stage dominates, the product’s life cycle impact, say for a structure with low energy consumption in use, then manufacturing stage impacts, and resource consumption must be addressed in order to increase eco-efficiency.

Addressing the Three Dimensions of Sustainability

Sustainability is generally considered as covering three dimensions addressing the impacts on the environment, the impacts on society and central stakeholders, and the impacts on the economy of the manufacturer, as represented in the concept of the triple bottom line.

In its “10 principles of sustainable production,” the Lowell Center for Sustainable Production addresses these three dimensions in 10 concrete focus points (Lowell Center 2012):

  1. 1.

    Products and packaging are designed to be safe and ecologically sound throughout their life cycle.

  2. 2.

    Services are organized to satisfy real human needs and promote equity and fairness.

  3. 3.

    Wastes and ecologically incompatible by-products are reduced, eliminated, or recycled.

  4. 4.

    Chemical substances or physical agents and conditions that present hazards to human health or the environment are eliminated.

  5. 5.

    Energy and materials are conserved, and the forms of energy and materials used are most appropriate for the desired ends.

  6. 6.

    Work places and technologies are designed to minimize or eliminate chemical, ergonomic, and physical hazards.

  7. 7.

    Work is organized to conserve and enhance the efficiency and creativity of employees.

  8. 8.

    The security and well-being of all employees is a priority, as is the continuous development of their talents and capacities.

  9. 9.

    The communities around workplaces are respected and enhanced economically, socially, culturally, and physically.

  10. 10.

    The long-term economic viability of the enterprise or institution is enhanced.

These principles need to be operationalized to be effective in design and manufacturing. Metrics with specific definitions are needed to ensure these principles are upheld. A thorough understanding of material, energy, and water flows as well as any associated hazard or risk to humans and ecosystems is required to address the environmental dimension of sustainability. Human and labor rights, as advocated by international bodies such as the UN and International Labour Organization (ILO), provide some insight into the more basic issues of the social dimension of sustainability. However, as the Lowell Center’s principles imply, metrics are needed to assess the well-being of a range of stakeholders, including employees, communities, consumers, and others impacted by product life cycles. Finally, measures to assess long-term economic viability and the broader economic contribution of an organization are needed to address the economic dimension of sustainability.

Application

Applications of sustainable manufacturing can be found across various scales, from the global/supply chain level down to the process level of manufacturing (see Duflou et al. 2012 for a review of how energy and resource efficiency is addressed at the different scales). At the global level, techniques can be utilized to optimize the location of suppliers in order to reduce the energy and, consequently, the greenhouse gas emissions attributed to transportation. Additionally, a factory manager can opt to build the factory close to the consumer market as a means of lowering the environmental impact of the distribution of products to consumers. Facility design is another viable avenue for achieving a state of sustainable manufacturing as the installation of energy-efficient HVAC equipment and lighting would effectively lower the energy consumption of a facility, as would the implementation of machine tool prioritization techniques during the factory planning and operational phases (Diaz and Dornfeld 2012; Herrmann et al. 2011). A product’s sustainability can be optimized in a life cycle perspective using Design for Environment tools (Hauschild et al. 2004) and also taking into account the social impacts along the life cycle (Jørgensen et al. 2008; Hauschild et al. 2008). At the machine tool level, the “tare” energy consumption can characterize the electrical energy of a piece of production equipment, so machine tools with lower tare energy would consequently consume less energy as well (Vijayaraghavan and Dornfeld 2010). Lastly, at the process level, we can consider tool path planning (Kong et al. 2011), tooling (Diaz et al. 2010, 2011), and the use of alternative cooling techniques (Klocke and Eisenblätter 1997; Li et al. 2012) to reduce the environmental impact of processing raw material. This highlights a few examples of methods that can be utilized to achieve the state of sustainable manufacturing, and more detailed examples can be found in Dornfeld (2012).

Competitive Sustainable Manufacturing

As proposed by CIRP, a holistic overarching multilevel dynamic paradigm addressing a sustainable development is Competitive Sustainable Manufacturing (CSM) (Jovane et al. 2008), where manufacturing has to cover the entire product/service life cycle (Yoshikawa 2008), including enabling processes and business models (Fig. 1).

Sustainable Manufacturing, Fig. 1
figure 1161figure 1161

Cycles of material and information flow. (Westkaemper et al. 2000)

Full size image

The demand paradigm, challenge-based paradigm, and the response paradigm, supported by the research-innovation-market value chain, are depicted in Fig. 2.

Sustainable Manufacturing, Fig. 2
figure 1162figure 1162

Manufacturing actions for sustainable evolution. (Yoshikawa 2008)

Full size image

CSM Fundamentals

  • Competitiveness (defined as “market” success) and sustainability represent mandatory conditions that must be met by products and services, by processes and business models, and by enterprises, for CSM to respond to the challenges (Jovane et al. 2008).

  • At the macro (country) level, competitiveness was introduced by Porter. It is based on the productivity with which a given country produces goods and services.

  • At the meso level, competitiveness may be seen as the ability of a supply paradigm to respond, better than another one, to a demand paradigm.

  • At the field level, it may be defined as a comparative concept, i.e., the ability of an actor (firms, universities, institutes, research centers, etc.) to respond to “customer demand” better than anyone else.

At the macro level, manufacturing sustainability is achieved when facing:

  • Economic challenges by producing wealth and new services ensuring development and competitiveness through time.

  • Environmental challenges by promoting minimal use of natural resources (in particular, nonrenewable) and managing them in the best possible way while reducing the environmental impact to sustainable levels.

  • Social challenges by promoting social development and improved quality of life.

At the meso level, sustainability of manufacturing requires the development of appropriate response paradigms and enabling technologies concerning high added-value products and services, processes, and business models that meet the aforementioned economic, social, and environmental conditions.

At the field level, the implementation of manufacturing sustainability relies on sustainable companies that – in cooperation with other stakeholders – are able to generate and produce, by adopting competitive and sustainable processes and business models, new, high added-value products and services, responding to grand challenges (Jovane et al. 2008).

Several advanced and emerging countries are acting proactively by conceiving and launching research and innovation programs. For instance, the European Union is promoting and supporting initiatives toward CSM as proposed by the Manufacture Technology Platform. International institutions, such as the OECD and UNEP, are strategically addressing CSM.

Recently, researchers from Harvard Business School and London School of Economics demonstrated that in a matched comparison of 180 companies, the 90 companies that voluntarily adopted environmental and social policies long ago significantly outperform the 90 similar companies that do not consider sustainability an important part of their business and, hence, have adopted none of these policies. The outperformance is both in terms of performance in annual accounts and on the stock market. On the latter, return on investment was up to 50% higher over the full period 1992–2010 (Eccles et al. 2012).

Cross-References