e-Business with software services for sustainable manufacturing

With steady changes to the global environmental agenda over the past two decades, manufacturing companies are driven to internalise environmental aspects of their businesses, both to meet local environmental regulations and to conform to emerging international standards and best practices. Information on environmental issues is crucial to assist companies in improving their environmental performance. We propose in this paper the emerging service-oriented approach for establishing c-business by enabling the linking of relevant environmental information to business processes, and to foster the sharing of information between sustainable manufacturing companies. The links between the business functions of a manufacturing company and the environmental dimension of the business are analysed in the paper. Using these links, a simplified service-oriented software model is derived to deliver information on the life cycle environmental impacts of manufactured products. The proposed approach could provide a basis for developing innovative e-business with software services, which could assist manufacturing companies, both large and small, to realise improvements in environmental performance.