Live Life Cycle Assessment Implementation using Cyber Physical Production System Framework for 3D Printed Products

Abstract

Sustainable manufacturing aims to deal with the challenges such as climate change, biodiversity loss and resource scarcity by minimising the environmental impacts due to product, processes, and systems through optimal use of energy and resources. Life cycle assessment (LCA) has become an important tool to identify, evaluate and assess the environmental impact of a product, process, or system, along with all the stages of the life cycle of a product. However, several drawbacks such as complexity, uncertainty and impreciseness are also associated with this methodology. Therefore, live LCA as a plausible solution, is gaining popularity with the advancements in Industry 4.o tools and techniques, enhancing ability to collect and analyse live data from various processes, interpret results, identify hotspots, trade-offs, and present better ideas about the environmental impacts in-line with the process. This paper proposes a cyber-physical production system framework for live LCA to estimate the environmental impact of 3D printed products with different combinations of design and process parameters. Also, optimum settings of these parameters are determined, and validated to minimize the environmental impacts. This enables real-time monitoring of the environmental impacts, driving prompt decision support for useful insights to the operator, project manager, business manager, or customer thereby improving the visibility and transparency.