Sustainable Manufacturing - 5GUC2304

Goal(s)

There is no single common definition of sustainable manufacturing but the US Department of Commerce’s Sustainable Manufacturing Initiative sums it up 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.”

This course allows students to learn about the main principles and main changes to come for sustainable manufacturing and finally to understand how to implement the main methods and tools supporting decision making for sustainability in Engineering.

Students will study in detail the production methods of the future. Concepts like remanufacturing,circular economy, product service strategy and upgrading are explained. Economic and legal instruments that initiate the transition of firms are presented.

Lectures are accompanied by a projet (done in groups of 3-4) that aims at improving and testing the knowledge of chosen concepts in particular industries for particular products.

At the end of the course, the student will be able to:

• Understand environmental issues for industries and firms
• Implement environmental assessment methods
• Define adapted industrial policies and strategies

Content(s)

Lectures = 36 hours
Projects = Tutorials = 20 hours
• Individual work: 80 hours

Content:
BLOCK I: Construction of requirements outside the company (10,5h)
BLOCK II: How does the company organize and adapt? (13.5h)
BLOCK III: Tools (12h)

-A project on an environmental analysis (20 hours of project monitoring in total + 50 hours of individual work)

Basics in product and production technologies.
Basic knowledge of Economics and Sociology of Organisation.