A holistic perspective of the sustainable manufacturing: a novel conceptual approach

Sustainability is recently considered the buzzword in manufacturing environments. Analysis and investigation of sustainability in manufacturing becomes urgent not only from one stream but also from the whole manufacturing streams. The main goal of this paper is to explain how to classify sustainability in all streams of manufacturing as a whole (machine components design, manufacturing processes and manufacturing systems) through identifying the sustainability enablers. A framework to analyse the whole manufacturing streams will be illustrated and discussed to identify which enablers are significant in each manufacturing stream and which manufacturing stream is more significant towards whole manufacturing sustainability than others. A novel assessment for measuring the manufacturing sustainability will be presented. It seemed that the stream of the manufacturing system represented the highest turbulent one due to the diversity and numerous sustainable enablers. It was also observed from this analysis and investigation that understanding sustainable manufacturing as a whole is a comprehensive task and it is recommended as one of major pillars towards the Industry 4.0.