Yasushi Umeda

Advances in Life Cycle Engineering for Sustainable Manufacturing Businesses

Life cycle engineering explores technologies for shifting industry from mass production and consumption paradigms to closed-loop manufacturing paradigms, in which required functions are provided with the minimum amount of production. This subject is discussed from various aspects: life cycle design, design for environment, reduce-reuse-recycle, life cycle assessment, and sustainable business models. This book collects papers from the 14th International CIRP Life Cycle Engineering Conference, the longest-running annual meeting in the field.

Development of Modular Design Method for Inverse Manufacturing

Modular design methods have been studied for ease of, mainly, manufacturing or assembling. However, modular design methods to reduce environmental loads considering whole product life cycles such as reuse or upgrading have hardly been studied enough. This paper proposes a method for determining modular structure of a product by aggregating various parameters related to a whole product life cycle by using SOMs (Self-Organizing Maps). This paper also illustrates prototype system that implements the proposed method and a case study of modular design of a printer. The case study revealed that the proposed method succeeded in modularizing the target product with considering several kinds of parameters including material kinds, lifetimes, and life cycle options

A Closed-loop Manufacturing System focusing on Reuse of Components

Environmentally conscious manufacturing has gained more and more interests in recent years. For achieving it, closed-loop manufacturing system where products are made from used products, parts and materials taken-back from market, as well as new ones, should be established. Focusing on factories, complicated fluctuations of amount, quality, and timing of these taken-back resources make effective planning and control of these factories very difficult. In this paper, a conceptual factory model of a closed-loop manufacturing system is designed considering material flow, with these various kinds of fluctuations. It also illustrates a prototype factory model that has developed for aiming at handling these fluctuations

The Asian approach to a resource-circulating society - Research framework, prospects and networking

One of the main challenges in sustainability science is to develop visions of a sustainable society. For example, the Japanese government defines the concept of a sustainable society as a combination of a low-carbon society, a resource-circulating society and a naturally symbiotic society. However, a holistic vision integrating these three societal visions has not yet been presented or fully clarified. Developing visions is thus essential to setting targets for a sustainable society as well as for assembling the various technological, political and grassroots measures required to achieve those targets. For this purpose, numerous scenarios have been proposed (IPCC, 2007; Japan LCS Scenario Team, 2008; International Energy Agency, 2004). However, scenarios focusing on a resource-circulating society (RCS) have rarely been put forward. Describing sustainability scenarios is an effective approach in discussions of a sustainable society and for creating a consensus regarding this society. Moreover, by analysing existing sustainability scenarios, we can identify their essential problem structures and develop potential solutions for achieving sustainability.

Characterization and local practices of urban-rural symbiosis

National and local governments have begun constructing low-carbon societies by setting medium- and long-term goals for each sector of concern. Design of regional systems for circulating natural resources across urban and rural boundaries is a promising measure for decreasing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions as well as extending co-benefits, such as pollution prevention and social development, into rural areas. However, primary sectors with weak economic bases are exempt from requirements to set GHG emission reduction targets. In addition, resource exchange between rural and urban areas is insufficient. For example, in Japan, up to a century ago, considerable amounts of night soil generated in urban areas were collected and transported to rural areas for use as fertilizer. Then agricultural products such as rice and vegetables grown with this fertilizer were consumed by people in urban areas, later becoming night soil again. However, because of urbanization and the prevalence and effectiveness of chemical fertilizer etc., this resource-circulating system fell into disuse. Urban-rural issues are also becoming important outside Japan. For example, in China the income gap between urban and rural areas has been increasing simultaneously with rapid economic growth and urbanization. Therefore, as a measure for building low-carbon societies, we should reconsider the relationship between urban and rural areas and propose plausible forms of partnership between them. For this purpose, it is necessary to model and assess these partnerships, estimate the potential reduction of GHG emissions made possible by such partnerships and describe images and visions of the desired societies that would result from them.