Milton Borsato

Bridging the gap between product lifecycle management and sustainability in manufacturing through ontology building

Green manufacturing has been a major concern in recent years. As product lifecycle management strategies embrace sustainability within its spectrum of multi-disciplinary efforts, it has become crucial that manufacturing companies have the ability to exchange product and process related data with emphasis on sustainability not only amongst its internal information systems like CAD, CAPP and ERP, but also throughout their supply chain and other stakeholders. Industry demands solutions for interoperability between heterogeneous systems that can account for the necessary semantics in order to establish seamless, unambiguous information sharing of data from a products cradle to its grave. One of the most promising approaches to overcome these issues is the use of ontologies that serve as interlingua, for translating between local data structures. The present research proposes an ontology that relates sustainability terms to product and process data entities through semantic ties.

An ontology building approach for knowledge sharing in product lifecycle management

A great difficulty regarding the management of information systems is the fact that much of the knowledge available within organisations can only be found in a non-structured form. Consequently, one of the major problems faced by industry is the low degree of interoperability (capacity that a system presents of sharing and interchanging information and applications). This problem is even more serious when considering an entire product lifecycle, where several pieces of software are involved in allowing the organisation of product lifecycle management (PLM). One of the most promising approaches in addressing these issues is the structuring of formal ontologies. This article presents an ontology proposal for facilitating knowledge and information sharing, with the ultimate aim to ensure a transparent interoperability between systems used for the interchange of information throughout an entire product lifecycle.

Exergetic analysis as an agile approach to recycling processes: a literature review

The rapid increase of waste presents a global challenge pursuing sustainability. In response, recycling is widely recognised as a friendly strategy to the environment and the proper approach to minimise the impact on the environment and the economy. However, the available recycling technology requires raw materials and energy, thus contributing to the depletion of resources. Therefore, it is vital to assess the efficiency of recycling processes to determine their real benefit. The literature suggests a series of approaches, which may be, at first sight, confusing. This study focuses on efficiency evaluation of recycling through exergy as an agile response. It performs a systematic review, based on nine significant factors in recycling, of the relevant literature, evaluating the recycling through the exergetic approach. The review makes two important contributions. First, it presents an approach for assessing such diverse literature in a single structure. In addition, revealing improvement opportunities and future research.

Modularity Adoption in Product Development: A Case Study in the Brazilian Agricultural Machinery Industry

Facing a competitive and globalized market and with increasingly demanding customers, companies must constantly seek the development of practices in the development of new products. One of the current practices is the adoption of modularity. In that sense, the objective of this paper is to conduct an analysis of this practice in a Brazilian company, which manufactures agricultural machinery. The understanding of modular concept for product engineering is investigated as well as current practices adopted by the company. The applicability of modular design in current products is focused. Regarding the research method, these involve firstly a literature review followed by field research using data collected from interviews with product engineers and document analysis as source of evidence. From the results, it is possible to conclude that the adoption of modularity in the development of new products increases production flexibility, reduces product development time and provides economy of scale, with the purchase of standard components in greater volume.

Ontologia PLM Project: Development and Preliminary Results

A great difficulty regarding the management of information systems is the fact that much of the knowledge available inside the organizations only can be found in a nonstructured form. As a consequence, one of the major problems faced by the industrial segment, including capital goods industries, is the low degree of interoperability (capacity that a system presents of sharing and interchanging information and applications). This problem is even more serious when considering the whole product lifecycle, where several pieces of software are involved to allow the organization of PLM (Product Lifecycle Management). One of the most promising approaches to address these issues is the structuring of formal ontologies. This paper presents the preliminary development of an ontology (called Ontologia PLM Project), that aims to ensure a transparent interoperability between systems used for the interchange of information through the whole product lifecycle. This project is focused on the capital goods industry and encompasses eight domains of application (DA). A group of specialists is responsible for analysing each DA. At the moment, the DA’s have defined the set of related classes and are involved in inserting properties and restrictions. Finally, a small set of axioms has been implemented allowing verifying the preliminary behaviour of the proposed ontology.

Designing Eco-Effective Reverse Logistics Networks

Reverse Logistics Networks (RLNs) have grown in importance after return policies became compulsory. Lately, questions have been raised whether they effectively decrease environmental impact: efforts to optimize the eco-efficiency of RLNs through minimizing costs and emissions were deployed, but results are not advancing with the necessary speed. Alternatively, the eco-effectiveness (“doing the right thing” for the environment) approach emerges, promoting a supportive relationship, balancing environment and economy. This research aims to model the design (or redesign) process of eco-effective RLNs. There are numerous ecodesign tools focusing on product or service design, but an eco-effective design process conceived specifically for logistics design purposes is yet to be delivered. Research was carried out using the Design Science Research Methodology and an exemplification for the Poultry Industry was outlined to demonstrate how the process unrolls. The model was conceived using a combination of Upcycling, Industrial Symbiosis, TRIZ rationale and Collaboration for Sustainability. The proposed design process model will help the conception of more innovative, eco-effective logistics networks.

Sustainable design and its interfaces: an overview

One of the best opportunities to deliver sustainable principles is during the product development process. To be considered truly sustainable, a product must be designed respecting three dimensions: economic, environmental and societal, in a systemic approach. From this perspective, this paper aims to overview sustainable product design and interfaces with its supporting processes, taking advantage of the knowledge development process - constructivism, a bibliometrics tool. Research domains and keywords were defined in the preliminary steps to narrow the search. Scientific databases were selected and researched using Boolean logic. The resulting article list was finally evaluated and filtered accordingly. Findings presents bibliometric evaluation with the evolution of number of published papers and a list of articles per journal; a list of authors and, finally, a brief overview of the most relevant papers organised in eight proposed categories (seven support processes and the ecodesign) containing their results and trends for future research.

Cooperation of suppliers and clients with companies in the agricultural machinery industry: some evidence from Brazil

Companies in the agricultural machinery industry (AMI) in Brazil have shown significant revenues and potential growth in recent years, especially due to the worldwide market expansion for bio-fuels and grains. In order to overcome expertise deficiencies for developing increasingly complex products and achieving an alignment with market needs, companies have carried out cooperative projects with suppliers and customers. The present paper aims at identifying the most important factors for successfully establishing cooperative projects based on practical evidence collected from four case studies. The results suggest that companies should focus on getting upper management more engaged in their product development process and developing ways to bridge cultural gaps with suppliers and clients. In addition, the adoption of tools for facilitating project data exchange with partners as well as retaining and retrieving knowledge about previous projects is recommended.