Challenges for Better Sustainable Manufacturing

Sustainable manufacturing is regarded as a new manufacturing paradigm that provides an abstract representation of a manufacturing system. Although many manufacturing paradigms have been proposed, most of them are based on the assumption that the boundary of a manufacturing system can be defined based on customers’ requirements. However, sustainable manufacturing is different. It has evolved from the past manufacturing paradigms and brings new challenges to today’s practice. Within the context, the objective of this work is to examine the manufacturing requirements in a wider scope, to revisit existing paradigms so as to clarify the limitations and bottlenecks, and eventually to identify future challenges for better sustainable manufacturing. This paper reports our findings on what the requirements and challenges are, and reveals a Cloud-based approach toward better sustainability.