Environmental Impact Assessment using Production Flow Simulation

Licentiate thesis, 2014

A higher-level perspective for production engineers and enables detailed assessment of dynamic manufacturing systems environmental impact at a system level. By using simulation, the simulation engineer enables to understand how minor adjustments affect the system. This thesis shows how to use simulation of manufacturing systems with an environmental sustainability focus. Thus, analyse the system from both an economical and environmental perspective at simultaneous. Static assessments have been the main approach analysing systems environmental impact. Dynamic manufacturing systems cannot be modelled statically properly. Static assessment lacks the ability to predict how the system operates and react after adjustments of the system. However, dynamic simulations of systems are data intensive and require more resources and knowledge. This thesis elaborates on when to use simulation of manufacturing systems to assess environmental impact. In short, simulation of manufacturing system can be efficient when there is a need for both productivity assessment and environmental assessment. This thesis used action research in two industrial cases to advance a methodology using simulation for environmental assessment of manufacturing systems. The initial methodology is developed from a literature review of previous studies and interviews with practitioners. Current commercial software lacks out of the box support for the functionalities supporting the assessment proposed in this thesis. However, most existing software tools are possible to use due to the high adaptation potentials. This thesis proposes a set of new functionalities needed to support the proposed methodology in this thesis. A developed demonstration software presented in the thesis implements the functionalities. The result is a very simple demonstration tool to be used by production engineers with low experience of simulation.