Development and utilization of a Process-oriented Information Model for sustainable manufacturing

Nowadays sustainability related decision making plays a critical role in the product design and manufacturing. However, due to the lack of a formal representation of the information regarding the manufacturing processes and sustainability, the sustainability evaluation of the manufacturing processes in the design phase is still inadequate. Thus, a new generation of Computer-Aided Design(CAD) system is needed for the product designers to carry out sustainability related decision makings. The first step toward such a goal is to develop an "information model" to capture and integrate all the relevant information. This paper proposes a Process-oriented Information Model (RIM) to integrate the relevant information regarding the sustainable manufacturing with the product design information. A three-layered framework is also proposed for the utilization of the proposed PIM in a software environment. A case study has been presented to demonstrate a preliminary software system developed based on the proposed PIM and the three-layered framework. It shows the preliminary system has the ability to assist the product designers in making their sustainability related decisions in the product design stage. (C) 2015 The Society of Manufacturing Engineers. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.