There is an increased interest in sustainability assessment of manufacturing systems and processes because of the growing global interest in sustainable manufacturing practices. The current sustainability assessment models present a holistic approach, e.g. LCA, without much focus on process specific details. This paper uses a ‘XSI’ approach for defining sustainability indices (e.g. Energy Sustainability Index, ESI). These sustainability metrics can quantify machining processes in terms of impact on the environment and power consumption in a flexible manner, so that various material removal processes can be rated on a uniform scale. In addition, the concept of Normalization, with respect to the ‘feature-of-interest’ is introduced, thus presenting a flexible rating system in terms of process types (turning, milling etc.) and perspectives (material removal, quality etc.). A user-friendly calculator is developed, which converts a set of inputs for the machining scenario into a set of measurable rating quantities and indices including but not limited to production rate, production cost, tool life/cost, energy consumption and environmental burden. This will enable the manufacturing engineer to make an informed decision about parameter selection and process design for sustainability. Machining of hard-to-machine materials such as Titanium Alloys is such a scenario, which is used as a case study to validate the proposed approach.
Flexible manufacturing systems modelling and performance evaluation using AutoMod
