Field: Mechanical Engineering

Sustainable Manufacturing: Modeling and Optimization Challenges

Sustainable manufacturing requires simultaneous consideration of economic,

environmental, and social implications associated with the fabrication and production of
goods. Though economically vital, manufacturing processes have retained the negative
image of being inefficient, polluting, and dangerous. However, industrial and academic
researchers are re-imagining manufacturing as a source of innovation to meet future
needs by undertaking strategic activities focused on sustainable processes and
systems.

Achieving sustainability in manufacturing requires a holistic view spanning not just the
product, and the manufacturing processes involved in its fabrication, but also the entire
supply chain, including the manufacturing systems across multiple product life-cycles.
This requires improved models, metrics for sustainability evaluation, and optimization
techniques at the product, process, and system levels. Despite developments in
sustainable oriented manufacturing at product, process and systems-level research,
many challenges and opportunities remain. There is need to explore recent trends and
new concepts in the development of sustainable products, processes and systems and
predictive models and optimization techniques for sustainable manufacturing processes
for implementation.

Sustainable Manufacturing and Design: Concepts, Practices and Needs

Sustainable manufacturing requires simultaneous consideration of economic,

environmental, and social implications associated with the design and fabrication of
goods. Recent researches highlight the importance of integrating sustainability with
manufacturing and design, along with other objectives such as function,
competitiveness, profitability and productivity. The need of utilizing appropriate tools like
design for environment, life cycle assessment and other environmentally sound
practices that are cognizant of the entire life cycle of a process or product is imperative.
It is likely that sustainability and environmental stewardship will be increasingly
important considerations in manufacturing and design in the future and are likely to
influence the main priorities for advancing manufacturing operations and technologies.
Designers and manufacturing decision makers who adopt a sustainability focus and
establish a sustainability culture within companies are more likely to be successful in
enhancing design and manufacturing. More extensive research and collaboration is
needed to improve understanding of sustainability in manufacturing and design, and to
enhance technology transfer and applications of sustainability.
Field: System Engineering

Maintenance and Continuous Improvement of Complex Systems:

Linking Stakeholder Requirements to the Performance of Technical Systems

The failure of a technical system represents two different kinds of change. One change
is the degradation of system functions, while the other change is the increase in
stakeholder requirements. Hence, information about both stakeholder requirements and
system health are necessary in order to properly manage system failures. This
management includes a combination of maintenance and improvement efforts. The
combination is especially crucial when dealing with complex and critical systems, where
a change may result in unwanted consequences with extensive losses. In this situation,
maintenance and improvements can be supported by the use of test systems, which
aim at enhanced testability and maintainability performance of the technical system. A
case study focused on a modern combat aircraft, which is considered as a highly
complex and safety critical system, has been reported in literature. Another case study
focused on maintenance-related requirements and risks during maintenance execution
of a process industry, which is a complex system with stringent requirements for
uninterrupted production, is also reported in previous work.

Further engineering research is indispensible to explore and describe the linking of

changing stakeholder requirements to the performance of technical systems, in order to
facilitate maintenance and continuous improvement and to reduce related hazards of
complex and critical systems, such as aircrafts, defense stores and military equipments.

System of Systems Engineering

A research in the field of system engineering is vital to develop the concept,
foundations, research directions, and practice implications for System of Systems
Engineering (SoSE). Application of SoSE is broad and is expanding into almost all
walks of life. Originally identified in the defense environment, SoSE application is now
much broader and still expanding. The early work in the defense sector has provided
the initial basis for SoSE, including its intellectual foundation, technical approaches, and
practical experience.

Introduction to the nature of the complex systems problems faced by SoSE and current
perspectives of system of systems need to explored. These perspectives should be
synthesized to a set of common themes in the literature and shortcomings in the current
state of SoSE. The research should also provide a perspective of SoSE, with
implications for design, deployment, operation, and transformation of complex systems
of systems, and propose the structure for a research agenda to advance the knowledge
and practice of SoSE with implications.