Frontiers of Engineering Reports on Leading-Edge Engineering from the 2013 Symposium (2014) / Chapter Skim
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Advancing Sustainable Manufacturing with the Use of Cognitive Agents--Steven J. Skerlos
Advancing Sustainable Manufacturing with the Use of Cognitive Agents--Steven J. Skerlos
Pages 61-72
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From page 61... ...
In this paper I consider how cognitive systems can advance the state of the art in sustainable manufacturing. After providing a definition of sustainable and cognitive manufacturing, I explain the importance of an optimization framework for sustainable manufacturing, discuss research needed using different knowledge systems to assess sustainability impacts, and illustrate several applications of cognitive agents to advance sustainable manufacturing.
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From page 62... ...
I then suggest that cognitive agents, inspired by early advances in carbon/ energy management, can help a manufacturer maximize its profit while coordinating achievement of the company's sustainability targets across its forward/reverse supply chains, manufacturing processes and systems, facility operations, product designs, and, potentially, the influence of future regulations. Optimization Framework for Sustainable Manufacturing Translated into an optimization statement, the Department of Commerce definition of sustainable manufacturing would aim to simultaneously maximize economic, environmental, and social performance.
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From page 63... ...
The master system would coordinate subsystems at the factory level, and these subsystems would select manufacturing processes and orchestrate facility operations in concert with firm objectives to minimize costs, waste, and negative impacts on workers, communities, and the environment. Given the complexity of Figure 1 it is appropriate to ponder the development of cognitive agents to support the achievement of sustainable manufacturing objectives.
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From page 64... ...
64 FIGURE 1 Scope of consideration for cognitive agents advancing sustainable manufacturing systems. The top-level system coordinates opera tional subsystem agents and product/supply chain design choices toward the achievement of corporationwide sustainability targets.
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From page 65... ...
Because sustainable manufacturing exists at the nexus of multiple product and process life cycles, advances in cLCA methods and data are necessary to help make decisions that may be counter intuitive but are actually better for the environment and society. For instance, carbon dioxide may be viewed either as a greenhouse gas pollutant to be avoided in manufacturing or, less intuitively and more correctly, as an environmentally conscious process fluid that is a waste from other industrial processes and that should be recovered for use in manufacturing to eliminate health hazards and water ollution while reducing life cycle greenhouse gas emissions.
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From page 66... ...
. Toward Cognitive Agents to Advance Sustainable Manufacturing Advanced optimization techniques are now being applied in supply chains to minimize fuel costs and carbon emissions by proposing alternative transportation modes and routes.
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From page 67... ...
These metrics can be constantly evaluated relative to firm-level sustainability objectives to yield suggestions generated by cognitive agents for changes to facility operation or manufacturing process selection. Two hypothetical examples below illustrate how cognitive agents could begin to influence manufacturing process selection.
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68 FIGURE 2 A hypothetical application of combining additive and subtractive manufacturing to convert mold tooling with minimal material investment and environmental emissions. CAD = computer-aided design; DMD = direct metal deposition.
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From page 69... ...
Cognitive Agents Beyond the Factory Walls Future generations of cognitive systems may link decisions made within the firm to its forward and reverse supply chains. The efforts of large manufacturing firms to understand upstream carbon emissions have already led to Internet-based systems to provide information about supplier carbon performance to centralized databases.
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From page 70... ...
. Summary The complexity of sustainable manufacturing demands the creation of new knowledge and systems to set targets for social and environmental improvement and achieve them at least cost.
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From page 71... ...
Cooperation between cognitive agents that influence both product design and manufacturing creates opportunities to improve product environmental performance and expand remanufacturing activity. In addition, the cooperation of firm- and government-level cognitive systems can lead to new strategies for achieving sustainability objectives at lower societal cost than permitted by legacy regulatory frameworks.
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From page 72... ...
International Journal of Sustainable Manufacturing 1(1)
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