Integrating sustainability within the factory planning process

Research activities on sustainability in manufacturing often emphasize environmental and economic issues in specific processes. This research attempts to describe and integrate sustainability with its economic, environmental and social dimensions into the well formulated process of factory planning. A model is developed to describe relations between factory buildings, manufacturing equipment, sustainability aspects and the process of factory planning. The model provides guidance for the decision-making during the planning and design stage. By revealing different kinds of interconnections, the understanding of the complexity within factories is improved. A case study is performed on a container-sized factory to verify the model usability. (C) 2012 CIRP.