%A Fu ZHAO, Vance R. MURRAY, Karthik RAMANI, John W. SUTHERLAND %T Toward the development of process plans with reduced environmental impacts %0 Journal Article %D 0 %J Front. Mech. Eng. %J Frontiers of Mechanical Engineering %@ 2095-0233 %R 10.1007/s11465-012-0334-3 %P 231-246 %V %N %U {https://journal.hep.com.cn/fme/EN/10.1007/s11465-012-0334-3 %8 2012-09-05 %X

Manufacturing process planning serves as a pivotal link between design and manufacturing. Process planning decisions play a critical role in determining the cost and environmental impacts associated with manufacturing. Past efforts to address environmental issues during process planning are briefly reviewed and potential approaches that can achieve reduced environmental impacts are then discussed. A proposed method is presented for environmentally conscious process planning. The method begins with an existing process plan, and then identifies impactful process steps, and associated design features, in terms of manufacturing cost and environmental impact. Alternative processes that can achieve these features are then considered to generate alternative process plans. These alternatives are then evaluated in terms of economic and environmental performance. The results of these evaluations are then used to generate a set of process plans that are non-dominated with respect to manufacturing cost and environmental impact objectives to produce a Pareto frontier. The proposed method is demonstrated using the manufacturing of a prosthetic hip shell as a case study.