Niki Bey

AREUS — Innovative hardware and software for sustainable industrial robotics

Industrial Robotics (IR) may be envisaged as the key technology to keep the manufacturing industry at the leading edge. Unfortunately, at the current state-of-the-art, IR is intrinsically energy intensive, thus compromising factories sustainability in terms of ecological footprint and economic costs. Within this scenario, this paper presents a new framework called AREUS, focusing on eco-design, eco-programming and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of robotized factories. The objective is to overcome current IR energetic limitations by providing a set of integrated technologies and engineering platforms. In particular, novel energy-saving hardware is firstly introduced, which aim at exchanging/storing/recovering energy at factory level. In parallel, innovative engineering methods and software tools for energy-focused simulation are developed, as well as energy-optimal scheduling of multi-robot stations. At last, LCA methods are briefly described, which are capable to assess both environmental and economic costs, linked to the flows of Material, Energy and Waste (MEW). A selected list of industrially-driven demonstration case studies is finally presented, along with future directions of improvement.

Timing and Targeting of PSS Methods and Tools: An Empirical Study amongst Academic Contributors

The emergence of product/service-systems has meant that development methods for such systems have emerged from academia. This paper investigates existing methods that are aimed at developing product/service-systems. Two aspects are determined for each examined method. The first aspect that has been surveyed is when a given method is meant to be used in the development of a product/service-system. This aspect has been determined through a qualitative assessment of each method. The second aspect surveyed is which persons in an organisation who are seen as the main drivers in the use of the methods. To gain this insight a questionnaire for each method has been conducted with the authors of the methods as participants. The main finding indicates that current PSS methods cannot thoroughly support the development of product/service-systems as their specificity is too low and that the methods need strong intra-organisational collaboration or even roles that do not yet exist.

Collaborative Product/Service-Systems – On Conceptualisation of PSS Offerings and Business Nets

Collaborative PSS development and operation, where multiple stakeholders are involved, is an emerging research area. This articles looks at the intra and inter-organisational company considerations in the industry case of company collaboration in the maritime branch. Initial steps are taken towards a framework that aligns service strategies and their unique value proposition with a set of business nets that seeks lights on the value-logic and management mechanisms to design and control each network.

How to assess sustainability in automated manufacturing

The aim of this paper is to describe how sustainability in automation can be assessed. The assessment method is illustrated using a case study of a robot. Three aspects of sustainability assessment in automation are identified. Firstly, we consider automation as part of a larger system that fulfills the market demand for a given functionality. Secondly, three aspects of sustainability have to be assessed: environment, economy, and society. Thirdly, automation is part of a system with many levels, with different actors on each level, resulting in meeting the market demand. In this system, (sustainability) specifications move top-down, which helps avoiding sub-optimization and problem shifting. From these three aspects, sustainable automation is defined as automation that contributes to products that fulfill a market demand in a more sustainable way. The case study presents the carbon footprints of a robot, a production cell, a production line and the final product. The case study results illustrate that, depending on the actor and the level he/she acts at, sustainability and the actions that can be taken to contribute to a more sustainable product are perceived differently: even though the robot is a minor contributor to the carbon footprint at cell or line level, from the perspective of a robot producer reducing the electricity consumption during the robots use stage can be a considerable improvement in the carbon footprint of a robot, and thus in the sustainability profile of the robot.

Sustainability Assessment in Manufacturing and Target Setting in Highly Automated Production

The interest in sustainability in manufacturing is growing. The European Commission elaborated in collaboration with the European Factories of the Future Research Association (EFFRA) a road map until 2030. The revised ISO 14001 standard, released end of 2015, emphasizes the integration of a life cycle perspective in production. External stakeholders like the Carbon Disclosure Project are striving for very detailed sustainability-related information. Therefore, this chapter will describe the latest approaches of how to assess sustainability in manufacturing, how production planning works in automated production and how sustainability thinking might be integrated in a feasible way. Additionally, a new framework is described which is able to link and allocate the product-related life cycle emissions in a consistent way from the large context down to the individual machine tool level in manufacturing. In essence, this chapter points out that efforts in manufacturing improvements need to be done with a view on entire systems rather than with a view only on single “island solutions”—and it shows a way how to do this.

Integration of Fiber-Reinforced Polymers in a Life Cycle Assessment of Injection Molding Process Chains with Additive Manufacturing

Additive manufacturing technologies applied to injection molding process chain have acquired an increasingly important role in the context of tool inserts production, especially by vat polymerization. Despite the decreased lifetime during their use in the injection molding process, the inserts come with improvements in terms of production time, costs, flexibility, as well as potentially improved environmental performance as compared to conventional materials in a life cycle perspective.

Step-by-step towards PSS - Evaluating, Deciding and Executing

Successful implementation of product-service system (PSS) as business strategy has proven lucrative through many industry examples. However, companies should tread carefully before committing to a costly restructuring towards PSS business creation. This paper claims that before a company moves from being a product to a product-service provider they should carefully consider internal and external aspects with regard to their organization, their market and their network. The paper proposes a three step process labelled the Evaluate-Decide-Execute approach; an approach that should enable the company to first evaluate the foundation for PSS, and then decide whether to commit to this course, and finally execute the transformation.