Environmentally benign manufacturing: Current practice and future trends

The consideration of environmental issues in manufacturing has taken on increased importance in terms of global competitiveness. Life-cycle assessment tools enable analysis of the environmental efficiency of industrial processes. Often these focus on the product, with standardized or customized data provided on current processing practice. Environmental management of the total materials cycle must provide tools to evaluate the effect of changes in processing or material substitutions on a global basis, where materials use, reuse, component remanufacture, and materials recycling can be considered and the overall costs and impacts assessed. In this article, two examples of net-shape processing are discussed from this total materials cycle perspective.