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Workshop on Formalizing Manufacturing Processes for Structured Sustainability Assessments

Workshop/Training
Sunday, June 4, 2017 to Thursday, June 8, 2017
Los Angeles, California

The ASME 2017 MSEC conference will host an NSF-sponsored workshop and competition on the modeling of manufacturing processes using a new ASTM standard format. Competitive travel stipends of up to $1500 will be offered to 15 workshop participants including the 8 competition finalists.

This workshop focuses on the modeling of manufacturing processes for system-level sustainability assessment. Any process type - including batch, continuous, and discrete event - is acceptable. Models can span from traditional scale down to nanoscale processes and be based on mechanical, electrical, chemical, biochemical, and bio technologies. Since sustainability is a balance of competing objectives including cost and time as well as environmental considerations, many different types of process performance metrics may be considered. In addition, the use of the models for system-level sustainability performance is encouraged.

Formal methods for acquiring and exchanging information about manufacturing processes will lead to consistent characterizations and help establish a consolidated repository for reuse of these models. Standard methods will ensure effective communication of computational analytics and sharing of sustainability performance data.

The purpose of this workshop is to (1) familiarize the research community with recent standards from ASTM E60 Subcommittee on Sustainable Manufacturing for modeling manufacturing processes, including the recently published ASTM E60 Standard Guide for Characterizing Environmental Aspects of Manufacturing Processes; (2) provide an opportunity for participants to put those standards into practice in modeling processes of their own interest, and to share experiences in applying the standards; and, (3) provide a source of candidate models to populate an extensible repository of reusable manufacturing process models being developed by NIST and its academic partners.

The recently published ASTM E60 Standard Guide for Characterizing Environmental Aspects of Manufacturing Processes is the primary source for definition of the standard format. The standard is summarized in the ASME’s Journal of Manufacturing Science and Engineering paper: “Standard Representations for Sustainability Characterization of Industrial Processes (link is external)” and is available through ASTM for competition participants.