Data-driven Sustainability in Manufacturing: Selected Examples

Abstract Sustainability in manufacturing is an imperative of growing importance to preserve our world’s resources. This paper emphasizes the notion that data collection, data analysis and data-driven control strategies in manufacturing are key to achieve more sustainable manufacturing. This is discussed with selected examples from quality assurance, machine tool design, and worker expertise. Quality assurance is the enabler of high-quality products, low scrap rates, and fault-resistant manufacturing practices. Machine tools are large consumers of energy in manufacturing and need to be designed with resource-efficiency in mind. The worker is another integral component of sustainable manufacturing, enabling highly efficient operations through his or her expertise, which can be demonstrated with the example of manual grinding. The selected examples exemplify how comprehensive data on different temporal and spatial levels enables data-driven sustainability in manufacturing, which helps achieving a truly circular world.