The Benefits in Coupling Exergy Analysis and Life Cycle Assessment in the Context of Sustainable Manufacturing for Industry 4.0: A Real Industrial Case

Abstract

The continuously rising cost of energy and its impact on environmental policy are the primary boost for industry to stay global competitive in terms of maximizing productivity and raising operational costs. The prevailing goal in the height of industry 4.0 is to inspect and optimize manufacturing processes. The challenge is to consider thermodynamics as simulation and modelling solution that enables improve energy production and help efforts to shift towards a smart factory. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that using thermodynamic models as Exergy and Life Cycle thinking provides major benefits since it allows evaluation results more reliable and aims to develop a retrofitting approach that enhances the process to avoid system failures efficiently. Any practitioner may pick suitable sensing networks in line with Industry 4.0, in order to develop a monitoring and control infrastructure and improve any manufacturing system, getting it smarter. In this article, an explanatory case study on the production process of an Italian SME will be presented and discussed.

Retrofitting-Based Development of Brownfield Industry 4.0 and Industry 5.0 Solutions

“…Aluminium frame accessories [147], Olive oil processing [95], Didactic plant [18], Industrial robot [82],…”

“…will be dedicated to describing the expect-able result from a successful retrofitting project. At first, the energy footprint can be tracked with the deployment of the energy mentioned above sensors [95], [147]. An IoT-based architecture for energy efficiency tracking is proposed in Ref.…”

“…[20], especially in industries with heavy hardware in which the machines may have years or decades of upgrade period. There are several approaches to define the retrofitting objectives to cope with that consideration, from an economic aspect, such as the life cycle cost (LCC) [177], or with maintenance and operational cost [178], [179], or life cycle assessment (LCA) in combination with the sustainable efficiency of a product process [147]. A variety of technical indicators, LCA, LCC, and the thermo-economic analysis, are studied in [180], to address the different effects of technologies that will be fused into the legacy system during the retrofitting work.…”

Understanding Customer Value in the Mobile Internet Era

“…Firm and customer are regarded as a community of shared interests in this perspective. e value creation system of producers has evolved into an open system, and consumers have gradually changed from passive acceptors of products/services to proactive value cocreators, participating in the process of value creation of company, and cocreating personalized, unique, and differentiated consumer experience with producers [13][14][15]. Customers are not only single final consumer but also important partners who are participating in the process of value creation of company.…”