(492d) Multistage Technology Integration for Sustainable Manufacturing of Complex Industrial Systems

Numerous technologies are available for process efficiency improvement, product quality control, waste reduction, safety assurance, etc.  However, how to identify the most appropriate technologies for cost-effective, stage-wised sustainability enhancement in industrial systems is always a challenge.  It becomes more complex if an industrial organization needs to evaluate the feasibility of different technology integration strategies and explore the pathways towards different sustainability goals in multiple development stages.  It becomes even more challenging when the available technical and nontechnical information is uncertain and incomplete.

In this paper, we introduce a multistage sustainability enhancement methodology, which can be used to formulate an industrial sustainability problem as a multi-objective optimization problem and to identify a set of ranked solutions for different goal achievement stages.  A unique feature of the methodology is its capability of deriving optimal solutions using uncertain information.  A sophisticated distributed biodiesel manufacturing problem is studied, where technology integration options are evaluated based on regional feedstock availability, fuel demands, transportation infrastructure, economic development plans, environmental regulations, etc.  The methodology is general so that it is applicable for the study various industrial sustainability problems.