EcoProIT

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EcoProIT is a project initiated at Chalmers University of Technology at the department of Product and Production Development. The project aims to provide production engineers a tool for detailed ecological footprint analyses, which are becoming more important in terms of marketing and legislation. [1] A published report by MIT in 2011 showed companies thought that environmental sustainable strategy is, or will be, vital to be competitive. [1] The report included many sectors, e.g. covering medicals, automobiles and consumer products. EcoProIT will design a tool for industrial applications used for detailed environmental footprint analyses of their production systems and the products produced using simulation. The tool will simulate the production and analyze the product's environmental footprint in a standardized way. It will also be possible to use the tool for bench marking between different sites. The aim for the tool puts high requirements on standardized methods and data management.

Contents

Vision - Tool usage

The vision of the usage of EcoProIT is important. Company A, who is a big and important stakeholder, is the main user of the tool in Figure 1. They require their close supplier partner to use the same tool. Company A and supplier A and B then set up an internal connection of their tools. The connection makes the input information for Company A up to date for every use. Company A also sets up a connection to their close partners that buy or distribute Company A's products. It will then be possible to give a good estimation of the impact total specific distribution chain that will be up to data. The information can be used to inform the end users about total costs for the production data. The up to date chain gives a possibility to show the consumers that the company makes progress in lowering the environmental impact. Every improvement is delivered directly to the customers, and the new marketing possibility show what the production department is doing for the environment.

All information that is produced by the tool should be able to be uploaded to the central EcoProIT Database that stores it in a standardized way to be able to be used by other companies. The tool is also connected to other LCA databases to be able to use as input for the raw materials used in the production. Figure 1 shows a schematic view on how the system could be connected.

Figure 1: Concept map of the future use of the tool Ecoproitvision.png
Figure 1: Concept map of the future use of the tool

Environmental Activity-Based Costing

As an approach to calculation of the impact, activity-based costing (ABC) will be used for calculations of environmental costs. Emblemssvåg and Bras [2] worked and analyzed the ABC as a method for environmental analyses. The method substitutes the cost for the production in money with an environmental emission, e.g. CO 2 emissions. [2] The emissions are measured and calculated from the energy and resources used. Then the emissions are allocated to the different products produced using the resources in the model.

The problems with ABC is that it requires a lot of data for a qualitative and accurate allocation of the cost from the resources. This is why the method fits well into a DES model. During a run In a DES environment it is easy to grab lot of detailed results needed for accurate allocation. The problem is that DES require a lot of initial effort to build the model. The approach to analyze environmental impact in a DES model is only beneficial if there is requirements for detailed analyzes and “what-if” scenarios is needed. [3] [4]

Hierarchically modeling approach

When LCA is included in a production simulation model, there is a bigger need for output information to perform the calculations. To be able to allocate environmental load that origins from the facilities the product that used the facility need to be traced. Environmental load that origin form the maintenance needs to be allocated based on the machines use of the maintenance. Machines that use other resources as compressed air or other supporting machines needs to be associated to trace the usage of those resources to be able to allocate the environmental load to the products that used the machine.

Andersson, J et al. (2012) [5] proposed to model the machines and resources in a hierarchy. The approach is based on that all product types have attributes with weight and size. The attributes is used together with the time the product has been in each resources to allocate the environmental load to all products using the resource at the same time. A product that is using a machine is also using the machines and facilities in the upper hierarchy. The approach supports increasingly detailed modeling. The modeler increase the level of detail by model each box in greater detail in a lower lever in the hierarchy. The modeler can in other nodes stay at a brief level with less dynamics.

Verification/Validation Strategies

Environmental impact is in general hard to validate. To be able to trust the models is very important that the models are transparent and provide multiple levels of verification. The strategy here is to not calculate everything in the simulation model and instead provide results, which can be verified, to calculate the used resources from. E.g. from the amount of processing time for a machine it is possible to calculate the used energy. From the used resources upstream processes required to produce the resources can be included to get a total emission for the production, e.g. if the emissions to produce one kWh electricity is 0.1 kgCO2 then the 4 kWh electricity used in a machine give an emission of 0.4 kgCO2. The concept is called Level of Equation. The basis is to divide the calculations of environmental impact into 4 levels [6]

Sponsors

The main sponsor for the project is ProViking [7] accompanied by a few big industrial partners.

Related Research Articles

Ecological footprint Individuals or a groups human demand on nature

The ecological footprint is a method promoted by the Global Footprint Network to measure human demand on natural capital, i.e. the quantity of nature it takes to support people or an economy. It tracks this demand through an ecological accounting system. The accounts contrast the biologically productive area people use for their consumption to the biologically productive area available within a region or the world. In short, it is a measure of human impact on the environment.

Life-cycle assessment Methodology for assessing environmental impacts

Life cycle assessment or LCA is a methodology for assessing environmental impacts associated with all the stages of the life cycle of a commercial product, process, or service. For instance, in the case of a manufactured product, environmental impacts are assessed from raw material extraction and processing (cradle), through the product's manufacture, distribution and use, to the recycling or final disposal of the materials composing it (grave).

Eco-capitalism, also known as environmental capitalism or (sometimes) green capitalism, is the view that capital exists in nature as "natural capital" on which all wealth depends. Therefore, governments should use market-based policy-instruments to resolve environmental problems.

Over the years, as countries and regions around the world began to develop, it slowly became evident that industrialization and economic growth come hand in hand with environmental degradation. Eco-efficiency has been proposed as one of the main tools to promote a transformation from unsustainable development to one of sustainable development. It is based on the concept of creating more goods and services while using fewer resources and creating less waste and pollution. "It is measured as the ratio between the (added) value of what has been produced and the (added) environment impacts of the product or service ." The term was coined by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) in its 1992 publication "Changing Course," and at the 1992 Earth Summit, eco-efficiency was endorsed as a new business concept and means for companies to implement Agenda 21 in the private sector. Ergo the term has become synonymous with a management philosophy geared towards sustainability, combining ecological and economic efficiency.

A sustainable business, or a green business, is an enterprise that has minimal negative impact or potentially a positive effect on the global or local environment, community, society, or economy—a business that strives to meet the triple bottom line. They cluster under different groupings and the whole is sometimes referred to as "green capitalism." Often, sustainable businesses have progressive environmental and human rights policies. In general, business is described as green if it matches the following four criteria:

  1. It incorporates principles of sustainability into each of its business decisions.
  2. It supplies environmentally friendly products or services that replaces demand for nongreen products and/or services.
  3. It is greener than traditional competition.
  4. It has made an enduring commitment to environmental principles in its business operations.
Carbon footprint Environmental impact

A carbon footprint is the total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions caused by an individual, event, organization, service, place or product, expressed as carbon dioxide equivalent. Greenhouse gases, including the carbon-containing gases carbon dioxide and methane, can be emitted through the burning of fossil fuels, land clearance and the production and consumption of food, manufactured goods, materials, wood, roads, buildings, transportation and other services. The term was popularized by a $250 million advertising campaign by the oil and gas company BP in an attempt to move public attention away from restricting the activities of fossil fuel companies and onto individual responsibility for solving climate change.

An environmental management system (EMS) is "a system and database which integrates procedures and processes for training of personnel, monitoring, summarizing, and reporting of specialized environmental performance information to internal and external stakeholders of a firm".

Carbon accounting or greenhouse gas accounting refers to processes used to measure how much carbon dioxide equivalents an organization emits. It is used by states, corporations, and individuals to create the carbon credit commodity traded on carbon markets. Examples of products based on forms of carbon accounting may be found in national inventories, corporate environmental reports, and carbon footprint calculators.

Ecological design or ecodesign is an approach to designing products and services with special consideration for the environmental impacts of the product during its whole lifecycle. It was defined by Sim Van der Ryn and Stuart Cowan as "any form of design that minimizes environmentally destructive impacts by integrating itself with living processes." Ecological design is an integrative ecologically responsible design discipline. Ecological design can also be defined as the process within design and development of integration of environmental consideration into product and service design and development with the aim of reducing environmental impacts of products through their life cycle.

Material input per unit of service (MIPS) is an economic concept, originally developed at the Wuppertal Institute, Germany in the 1990s. The MIPS concept can be used to measure eco-efficiency of a product or service and applied in all scales from a single product to complex systems. The calculation takes into account materials required to produce a product or service. The total material input (MI) is divided by the number of service units (S). For example, in case of a passenger car, the number of service units is the total number of passenger kilometres during the whole life span of the vehicle. The lower the material input per kilometre, the more eco-efficient is the vehicle. The whole life-cycle of a product or service is measured when MIPS values are calculated. This allows comparisons of resource consumption of different solutions to produce the same service. When a single product is examined, the MIPS calculations reveal the magnitude of resource use along the life-cycle and help to focus efforts on the most significant phases to reduce environmental burden of the product.

Eco-costs

Eco-costs are the costs of the environmental burden of a product on the basis of prevention of that burden. They are the costs which should be made to reduce the environmental pollution and materials depletion in our world to a level which is in line with the carrying capacity of our earth.

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Ecometrics is the quantitative analysis of economic, environmental, and societal systems based on the concurrent development of empirical theory, related by appropriate methods of inference in attempts to create more sustainable systems. Broadly defined, Ecometrics is a way to evaluate if an activity is contributing to more sustainable systems of production and consumption. Ecometrics is a system of statistical extrapolation and interpolation that uses principles of resource management in economic and environmental studies to analyze trends in consumption. With a comprehensive understanding of ecometrics, and thereby an understanding of the impacts of specific conscious or conventional opportunity costs, agents within economic systems can cause measurable change for the triple bottom line. The term was originally trademarked by Interface Global, a corporation founded by Ray Anderson. The parameters that cause change are often population, technology, transportation, consumption, public conscious, non-renewable or renewable resources, location, labor conditions, transportation and wealth. Ecometrics is used in labeling programs such as the US EPA Fuel Economy and Environment Label to determine the environmental and financial advantages of purchasing one car over another. There are many applications of Ecometrics for Environmental Impact Calculators infographics, and for political analysis. Because the parameters of ecometrics vary drastically for any activity, the applications of its resulting measurements are sometimes unilateral. Applied ecometrics exposes the complexity of making sustainable decisions, especially given other humanitarian goals such as third world economic development. In this way ecometrics shows any choice within consumption and production systems as wicked problems.

Zero-carbon housing and zero-energy housing are terms used interchangeably to define single family dwellings with a very high energy efficiency rating. Zero-energy housing requires a very low amount of energy to provide the daily needs and functions for the family occupying the home.

Hans Ronald "Harold" Krikke is a widely recognized scientist in Closed Loop Supply Chains.

Resource efficiency

Resource efficiency is the maximising of the supply of money, materials, staff, and other assets that can be drawn on by a person or organization in order to function effectively, with minimum wasted (natural) resource expenses. It means using the Earth's limited resources in a sustainable manner while minimising environmental impact.

Ecomechatronics

Ecomechatronics is an engineering approach to developing and applying mechatronical technology in order to reduce the ecological impact and total cost of ownership of machines. It builds upon the integrative approach of mechatronics, but not with the aim of only improving the functionality of a machine. Mechatronics is the multidisciplinary field of science and engineering that merges mechanics, electronics, control theory, and computer science to improve and optimize product design and manufacturing. In ecomechatronics, additionally, functionality should go hand in hand with an efficient use and limited impact on resources. Machine improvements are targeted in 3 key areas: energy efficiency, performance and user comfort.

Environmentally extended input-output analysis (EEIOA) is used in environmental accounting as a tool which reflects production and consumption structures within one or several economies. As such, it is becoming an important addition to material flow accounting.

Environmental systems analysis (ESA) is a systematic and systems based approach for describing human actions impacting on the natural environment to support decisions and actions aimed at perceived current or future environmental problems. Impacts of different types of objects are studied that ranges from projects, programs and policies, to organizations, and products. Environmental systems analysis encompasses a family of environmental assessment tools and methods, including life cycle assessment (LCA), material flow analysis (MFA) and substance flow analysis (SFA), and environmental impact assessment (EIA), among others.

References

  1. 1 2 Haanaes, Knut (2011). "Sustainability: The 'Embracers' Seize Advantage". MIT Sloan Management Review. Winter. Archived from the original on 18 June 2011. Retrieved 13 June 2011.
  2. 1 2 Emblemsvåg, Jan (2001). "Activity-Based Life-Cycle Costing". Managerial Auditing Journal. 16 (7): 635–654.
  3. ↑ Andersson, Jon; Anders Skoogh; Björn Johansson (2011). "Environmental Activity Based Cost using Discrete Event Simulation". Proceedings of the 2011 Winter Simulation Conference: 891–902. Retrieved 29 December 2011.
  4. ↑ Lindskog, Erik; Linus Lund; Jonatan Berglund; Tina Lee; Anders Skoogh; Björn Johansson (2011). "A Method for Determining the Environmental Footprint of Industrial Products Using Simulation". Proceedings of the 2011 Winter Simulation Conference: 2136–2147. Retrieved 29 December 2011.
  5. ↑ Andersson, Jon; Björn Johansson; Jonatan Berglund; Anders Skoogh (2012). "Framework for Ecolabeling using Discrete Event Simulation" (PDF). Proceedings of the 2012 Spring Simulation Multiconference. Retrieved 2 July 2012.
  6. ↑ Andersson, Jon; Skoogh, Anders; Johansson, Björn (December 2012). "Evaluation of Methods used for Life-cycle Assessment in Discrete Event Simulation". Proceeding of Winter Simulation Conference 2012. Winter Simulation Conference. Berlin. Retrieved December 19, 2012.
  7. ↑ "Proviking". Chalmers University of Technology. Retrieved 14 June 2011.
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