Manufacturing Systems Integration Program

Life Cycle Thinking
At each stage of the product or service life cycle, there is resource consumption
(as indicated by the green arrows) and production impacts (as indicated by the blue arrows). [D] © Alcan

Sustainable and Lifecycle
Information-based Manufacturing

Program Manager: Ram D. Sriram

Annual FTEs: 8.75 NIST FTEs

9 Guest Researcher FTEs

17.75 Total FTEs

Challenge:

The United States needs to prepare for a future where products are 100% recyclable, manufacturing itself has a zero net impact on the environment, and complete disassembly and disposal of a product at its end of life is routine. To document and monitor these changes, US industry will require key resources and methods that will enable it to measure sustainability along several dimensions (such as carbon foot print, energy accounting and recyclability of materials) allowing accurate assessment of status and progress.  These resources and methods require identification of dimensions, associated measurements and classification of information relevant to sustainable product design and manufacturing. Such a base of information is critical to product designers and manufacturing engineers so that they can incorporate sustainability in their efforts. Hence, the primary challenge is to develop requirements, formal models, and validation methods for sustainability-based and lifecycle information-based manufacturing that support interoperability among tools and standards for design, analysis, simulation, and lifecycle assessment and information management.

Overview

Sustainability and globalization are two forces shaping the future of product engineering and manufacturing. Globalization responds to the need for product variety to deal with differentiated demands around the world and to the ability of producing different parts and subsystems of products in distributed locations. The needs of sustainability and the global distribution of design and production require seamless exchange of vast quantities of information across the design and manufacturing network. Specifically, demands of sustainability are causing companies to implement new design and analysis procedures, energy reduction methods, material reduction efforts, and improved materials handling practices. Minimizing environmental impact has become a critical driving force for the manufacturing industry throughout the product lifecycle. ¹, ² In order for manufacturing to be cleaner, more efficient, and environmentally benign, industry needs to be able to make informed decisions throughout a product’s life. This requires better interoperability among tools and standards for design, analysis, simulation, lifecycle assessment and information management. NIST is equipped to define the needed requirements, formal models, and validation methods for sustainability-based and lifecycle information-based manufacturing. It is critical to the success of companies and their suppliers that this supporting IT infrastructure for sustainable manufacturing be done correctly, efficiently, and inexpensively.

Failures in information exchange at the interfaces between design, engineering, manufacturing and other functions can be viewed as the Achilles heel of good product design. ³ The ability of a firm to share relevant product descriptions and other information across the functional domains throughout the product lifecycle is critical to the firm’s performance in the context of the forces of sustainability and globalization. A significant challenge of this program is to infuse information and methods for sustainability assessment in the design and manufacturing of products. To achieve sustainability goals across the product life cycle, the information infrastructure has to move beyond silos of information to a networked information infrastructure servicing all phases of the life cycle.

A lifecycle support system that supports sustainability evaluations requires a move from product data exchange to product information and knowledge exchange across different disciplines and domains. Sustainability-based lifecycle support systems will need both syntactic and semantic interoperability through well-defined standards. The projects in this program address the challenges of information-based support of sustainable and globally distributed product lifecycle management.

Why NIST?

NIST can provide the unifying intellectual base to develop the requirements for and implement the standards to support a diverse range of industries, from discrete parts to continuous processes. Currently, the limited success in the implementation of integration, interoperability and information management technologies by some manufacturers impedes their ability to further capitalize on the emerging need for sustainable manufacturing directions. As companies venture into sustainable manufacturing, the need to integrate systems is further emphasized due to the inherent cross-disciplinary, multi-model nature of the work. The multi-model aspects reveal further interoperability problems because outputs from multiple application models must be combined to reach the desired results. Unlike corporations or universities, NIST sits at the interface between industry and academic research and has the capabilities, legitimacy and contacts to address such multi-disciplinary issues.

Program Objectives

The program has three major objectives:

Objective 1: Establish standards requirements for sustainable manufacturing

The following tasks will be undertaken to achieve this objective:

• Survey the standards and performance metrics landscape for sustainable manufacturing. Perform case studies of existing implementations of sustainable manufacturing to generate information requirements for the support of sustainability and characterize the economic, ecological and societal interactions in a product’s lifecycle. Propose new or harmonized standards and metrics for sustainable manufacturing.
• Characterize business and engineering information in support of a unified resource accounting scheme for supporting sustainable design, manufacturing, use and disposal of products. Develop green accounting principles to trace the environmental impacts from the part level to the system level and for the full lifecycle, including assembly, disassembly, and recycling.
• Characterize engineering information in support of long-term archival access to all lifecycle information, including sustainability aspects. Develop and test a framework for digital engineering information archives.

The following projects will address this objective:

• Project 1.1. Survey and analysis of relevant standards for sustainable manufacturing.
• Project 1.2. Scheme for computing carbon weight (footprint) for manufactured products.
• Project 1.3. Long term knowledge retention for digital technical product documentation.

Objective 2: Provide formal models of product and process information

The following tasks will be undertaken to achieve this objective:

• Develop information models for products and manufacturing processes that contain key attributes necessary for sustainable and lifecycle information-based manufacturing (such as energy and environmental costs of manufacturing equipment or material recovery costs of product components).  Present the resulting integrated formal models to industry, consortia and standards development organizations.
• Work with partners to develop and validate high-priority standards for seamless information exchange between engineering and production, and between production and manufacturing business functions. Enable reuse of existing manufacturing data standards within an evolving standards infrastructure, and help manufacturers ensure that established and widely-implemented engineering and product data standards can be retooled as needs or supporting information technologies change.

The following projects will address this objective:

• Project 2.1. Information models for sustainable manufacturing.
• Project 2.2. STEP evolution and extensions for sustainable manufacturing.

Objective 3: Develop validation, simulation and testing methodologies for information models and standards

The following tasks will be undertaken to achieve this objective:

• Develop model-based validation and testing techniques for sustainable and lifecycle information-based manufacturing.
• Develop the necessary extensions of current discrete-event simulation concepts and tools to incorporate attributes and metrics for the simulation of various sustainability aspects in manufacturing enterprises and supply chains. With the extensions, demonstrate the simulation of representative aspects of sustainability, for example, simulating regulatory compliance (e. g., RoHS, REACH, WEEE) and voluntary standards compliance (e. g., ISO 14000).
• Create test scenarios in the context of sustainable manufacturing for globalized manufacturing networks by validating information model standards for interoperability of tools and systems. Develop a testbed that validates the different aspects of the work conducted throughout this project by applying metrics for the performance of specific applications or procedures for sustainable and lifecycle information-based manufacturing.

The following projects will address this objective:

• Project 3.1. Model-based engineering for sustainable manufacturing.
• Project 3.2. Simulation of manufacturing enterprises for sustainability.
• Project 3.3. Standards and testbeds for sustainable manufacturing.

Projects

Sustainable and Lifecycle Information-based Manufacturing

Projects addressing Objective 1: Establish standards requirements for sustainable manufacturing

Project 1.1. Survey and analysis of relevant standards for sustainable manufacturing
Anticipated Completion Date: Q4, 2009

Project Overview:

The principal objective of the project is to define the standards landscape in the area of sustainable manufacturing, including such concerns as design for disassembly, carbon footprint dtermination, resource tolerancing, remanufacturing, recycling, energy resource management, and hazardous and toxic materials standards. The ad hoc and independent evolution of separate standards covering different aspects of the product lifecycle calls for an understanding of the current coverage and of any gaps. Mechanisms are needed for systematically evaluating, comparing, selecting and/or harmonizing product standards of overlapping scope so as to identify a set of complementary and interoperable standards for the support of the sustainable design, manufacturing, use and disposal of products.

To meet the project’s objective, the following activities will be undertaken:

• Survey industry needs, standards, and the performance metrics landscape for sustainable manufacturing. Standards to be studied include Life Cycle Assessment  for product and processes (LCA, ISO 14040), Restriction of Hazardous Substances  (RoHS), Registration, Evaluation and Authorization of Chemicals (REACH) and Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE ).
• Perform case studies of existing sustainable manufacturing systems to generate information requirements for sustainability assessment and to characterize economic, ecological and societal interactions in a product’s life cycle.
• Propose new or harmonized standards and metrics for sustainable manufacturing.

Deliverables and Intermediate Milestones:

Collaborators:

• Carnegie Mellon University (CMU)
• Syracuse University
• U.S. Army
• National Science Foundation

Customers:

• Other Federal agencies (e.g., Department of Energy )
• IBM
• Oracle
• Ford

Sustainable and Lifecycle Information-based Manufacturing

Project 1.2. Scheme for computing carbon weight (footprint) for manufactured products
Anticipated Completion Date: Q4, 2011

Project Overview:

The overall objective of the project is to lead the development of measurements and standards that facilitate the assessment of efficient fabrication, disassembly and recycling of manufactured goods, in order to assist US industry in achieving a 20 % reduction in carbon dioxide emission by 2010 and a 20 % reduction on the dependency on non-renewable resources by 2020. The principal vehicle for reaching this objective is the development of a systems approach to sustainable engineering systems (SES). SES are characterized by multiple interlinked pathways of interaction at various levels. These levels span economic, ecological and societal issues. The interactions within and across these levels are critical to the fundamental understanding of SES.  As part of this objective, the project will develop a methodology for incorporating information about carbon weight (CW) - often referred to as carbon footprint - into product characterizations. The property often referred to as “carbon footprint” is actually “carbon weight” of kilograms or tons of carbon emitted through the combustion of fossil fuels per activity over a year. CW is also expressed as the amount of CO2 emitted per dollar of economic output. The CW can be studied at macro and micro levels. At the macro level we will explore activity-based computing of CW. At the micro level, we will explore the application of mechanical tolerancing principles to CW metrology.

To meet the project’s objective, the following activities will be undertaken:

• Develop information models that provide an understanding of key issues and capture relevant attributes that are necessary for zero-impact manufacturing. These include aspects such as design for disassembly, carbon footprint, resource tolerancing, remanufacturing, recycling, and energy resource management.
• Develop information models and tools to facilitate the development of specifications of environmental performance measures that quantifiably evaluate the impact of a product or manufacturing process on the environment.
• Develop predictive tools, such as a carbon footprint evaluation tool, for demonstration and testing that provide some capability in predicting the impact of certain processes and actions on the environment.
• Develop metrics for carbon footprint budgeting for manufacturing processes.
• Develop measurement methods, metrological traceability, and conformance to environmental performance specifications (e.g., toxic material recovery, greenhouse gas emission, reuse, and recycle) for:
• Carbon output measurements and carbon output lifecycle analysis
• Efficiency measurements and certification
• Total lifecycle costing (impact) analysis methods.

Deliverables and Intermediate Milestones:

Collaborators:

• OMG
• IMS Project partners
• Other NIST OUs: BFRL, MSEL and ITL
• Department of Energy
• Environmental Protection Agency

Customers:

• Manufacturing industry (SMEs, Auto, Aerospace)

Sustainable and Lifecycle Information-based Manufacturing

Project 1.3. Long term knowledge retention for digital technical product documentation
Anticipated Completion Date: Q2, 2011

Project Overview:

The overall objective of the project is to remedy the lack of an infrastructure for archiving the digital representation of manufactured artifacts and thus improve the ability to retrieve and use prior engineering knowledge. Such an infrastructure will enable both design for sustainability and an informed approach to end-of-life handling of products. The nature of product and process information must be characterized to allow the development of methodologies for the long-term usability of engineering information, and metrics need to be defined for digital preservation of engineering information from Computer-Aided Design (CAD), Computer-Aided Engineering (CAE), Computer-Aided Manufacturing (CAM), Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) and related computer aided tools.

With product life cycles often far longer (i.e., fifty years for aircraft) than the expected lifetime of a manufacturing application used to process the data (approximately three years), or of the technologies used to store and retrieve the data (approximately ten years), searching for archived digital information is routinely problematic.  To achieve the goals of sustainability, especially for long lived products, we need to be able to access information on materials used, disassembly process and other details of the product, to be able to reuse, to recycle or to safely dispose the materials and parts.

In all these efforts, standards play a crucial role. We will harmonize our efforts with the recommendations of the Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems (CCSDS) common framework of terms and concepts which comprises the Open Archival Information System (OAIS), later adopted as the ISO 14721:2003 standard. We propose a taxonomy of archival usage scenarios in developing an initial guide to categorize different end-user access scenarios: (1) reference, (2) reuse and (3) rationale. The first task is to systematically study the end-user needs from the reuse, rationale and reference viewpoints, so as to better understand the level of granularity and abstractions required in the definition of digital objects.  End-user needs will be gathered through interviews and through visits to design and engineering facilities. The second task is to map the scope of the digital standards used and utilize the previously developed classification of types of standards to organize them. The third task is to create a framework based on the OAIS standard along with the engineering information modeling requirements. The final task is to develop a testbed to verify and validate the framework for a product model that covers as much of the product information as possible and is reasonable for testing the framework.

To meet the project’s objective, the following activities will be undertaken:

• Gather requirements by providing a forum for information and archival specialists, domain knowledge experts from manufacturing, product engineering and other stakeholders to discuss issues such as knowledge representation, archival methods and policies, and the use of data standards to promote long term retention of manufacturing knowledge.
• Create criteria and a classification system for long term preservation of engineering information to serve as the basis for evaluating the quality of archiving practices.

Deliverables and Intermediate Milestones:

Collaborators:

• Carnegie Mellon University (CMU)
• West Virginia University
• University of Bath
• University of Lyon
• ITL

• U.S. Archives/NARA
• US Navy

Sustainable and Lifecycle Information-based Manufacturing

Projects addressing Objective 2: Provide formal models of product and process information

Project 2.1. Information models for sustainable manufacturing
Anticipated Completion Date: Q4, 2011

Project Overview:

The principal objectives of the project are to: (1) provide formal representations of information to support the full range of the product lifecycle beyond the representation of form (geometry and material), (2) complete the standardization of the OMG reference model for managing product lifecycle information and (3) define formal models to supply the representation needs for sustainable manufacturing, including reuse, recycle (disassembly) and remanufacturing. The current lack of formal models (syntactically and semantically consistent representations) of product life cycle information makes it difficult to standardize and validate support systems for product life cycle management.

To meet the project’s objectives, the following activities will be undertaken:

• Extend the formal representation developed to date by synthesizing prior work on product, assembly and systems models, leading to comprehensive and rigorous models that facilitate automated reasoning, maintenance of consistency, semantic interoperability, and concurrent product development.
• Develop a standardized terminology of terms and concepts for products and processes (ontology), with an emphasis on sustainability.
• Analyze the standards requirements for sustainable manufacturing, including reuse, recycle (disassembly), remanufacturing identified in other projects.
• Develop smart disassembly techniques and supporting standards.
• Create lifecycle information models for interoperability among systems and tools that support sustainable manufacturing.
• Extend the Core Product Model (CPM) to support information related to sustainability issues in simulation.
• Integrate product and process models by developing design process models using PSL, SysML and related methodologies.

Deliverables and Intermediate Milestones:

Collaborators:

• CHALMERS University (Sweden)
• Carnegie Mellon University (CMU)
• IMS Project partners
• OMG
• ISO
• Department of Energy
• Environmental Protection Agency

Customers:

• Automotive industries (GM, Ford, Toyota)
• Aerospace  industries (Boeing)
• Simulation software vendors (Delmia, Rockwell)
• Other NIST OUs

Sustainable and Lifecycle Information-based Manufacturing

Project 2.2. STEP evolution and extensions for sustainable manufacturing
Anticipated Completion Date: Q4, 2010

Project Overview:

The principal objective of the project is to help U. S. manufacturers innovate quickly and incorporate sustainability issues by partnering with industry to develop and validate high-priority standards for seamless information exchange between engineering and production, and between production and manufacturing business functions. STEP, a significant existing standard for product data, has to be made compatible with new information technologies and has to be updated to deal with evolving and future sustainability issues.  This project addresses the problem of this evolution and extensions to keep STEP in line with other emerging IT standards.

The challenge of the project is that emerging sustainability needs and new technologies require existing STEP standards to be extended. However, it makes little sense to extend the STEP models in their present form based upon the EXPRESS language. Industry is rapidly embracing new modeling technologies coming from OMG (Object Management Group) and W3C (World Wide Web Consortium). Accordingly, tools and methods are needed to allow the evolution of existing manufacturing data standards such as STEP to take advantage of these new technologies. Once that is done, these standards can then be extended to meet priority needs such as supporting sustainability information.

To meet the project’s objective, the following activities will be undertaken:

• Demonstrate a process for migrating STEP data models to more widely implemented modeling and implementation technologies offered by OMG and W3C standards.
• Develop new STEP capabilities to meet the evolving needs of sustainable manufacturing.

Deliverables and Intermediate Milestones:

Collaborators:

• PDES, Inc.
• ISO TC 184/SC4
• Object Management Group (OMG)
• World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
• EuroSTEP, Inc.

Customers:

• Aerospace industry (Boeing, Lockheed)
• Automobile Industry (Ford, GM)

Sustainable and Lifecycle Information-based Manufacturing

Projects addressing Objective 3: Develop validation, simulation and testing methodologies for product and process standards

Project 3.1. Model-based engineering for sustainable manufacturing
Anticipated Completion Date: Q4, 2011

Project Overview:

Understanding the effect of design and manufacturing decisions on sustainability requires the identification of the variables that contribute to the characterization of sustainability for the designed objects (products and manufacturing processes) in question. The clear definition of sustainability metrics is fundamental in gaining an understanding and identification of the parameters that define sustainable manufacturing. A consequence of developing these metrics could be characterization of a quality measure from different aspects of sustainability (material or energy flow models at different levels of granularity).

The quality of sustainability will be only as good as the quality of information used. Measurement of information and data quality is an open question that will have to be developed in the context of defining and validating information models for all aspects of product design including sustainability. In physical metrology there are established principles such as fundamental units, precision, accuracy, traceability and uncertainty. In order to understand and define quality for information and sustainability we need to develop metrological concepts similar to physical metrology appropriate for validation and testing.

The current lack of formal models (syntactically and semantically consistent representations) of product life cycle information makes it difficult to standardize and validate support systems for product life cycle management. We have identified the following classification of standards relevant to PLM support: (1) information modeling standards (languages), (2) content standards- domains of discourse and (3) architectural framework standards. This classification may have to be extended to accommodate standards identified in Project 1.1.

To meet the project’s objectives, the following activities will be undertaken:

• Define a clear set of “conformance classes” and “metrics” based on some well defined standards and required set of functionalities at various stages of PLM, and define precise levels of interoperability among various systems and stake holders.
• Define metrics and metrology for sustainable manufacturing.
• Harmonize and extend standards related to sustainable manufacturing.

Deliverables and Intermediate Milestones:

Collaborators:

• Carnegie Mellon University (CMU)
• University of Maryland
• Syracuse University
• University of Toronto
• OMG
• ISO TC 184/SC4

Customers:

• Ford
• Lockheed Martin
• Boeing
• General Motors
• U.S. Army

Sustainable and Lifecycle Information-based Manufacturing

Project 3.2. Simulation of manufacturing enterprises for sustainability
Anticipated Completion Date: Q4, 2011

Project Overview:

The principal objective of the project is to extend current discrete-event simulation concepts and tools to incorporate attributes and metrics for the simulation of various sustainability aspects in manufacturing enterprises. With these extensions, the secondary objective is to demonstrate the simulation of representative aspects of sustainability in manufacturing enterprises.

A number of extensions will need to be made to the industry’s approach to manufacturing simulation in order to support sustainability.  The three major areas of change to be addressed are:

• Simulation case studies will need to address extended or new objectives. As an illustration, a traditional supply chain case study may be extended to model energy consumption to minimize carbon footprint, pollution, unnecessary transportation and layoffs due to production gaps, or to simulating regulatory compliance (e. g., RoHS, REACH, WEEE) and voluntary standards (ISO 14000) compliance.
• Evaluation metrics will need to be extended so as to incorporate the scoring of sustainability factors. Possible sustainability metrics will measure energy consumption, types and quantities of material used, pollution, manufacturing waste and by-products, recycling, product reuse, worker health/safety, and other effects on the environment and the community. 
• In order to support sustainability, modeling tools will need to provide additional functional capabilities as well as validated methods and models. New reference data sets will be required to provide ready access to appropriate sustainability reference data.

With the above extensions, various simulations need to be performed in order to: (1) validate the extended objectives, evaluation metrics and methodological extensions, (2) provide demonstrations in order to motivate adoption and expansion of the concepts by industry and (3) initiate the trend toward development of neutral, vendor-independent data formats for simulation models and reference data.

To meet the project’s objectives, the following activities will be undertaken:

• Define the extensions to simulation objectives, evaluation metrics, modeling tools and reference data sets needed to support sustainability.
• Develop an initial demonstration capability for the extended simulations.
• Demonstrate an initial set of extended case studies.
• Produce a revised set of extensions based on the demonstrations and the resulting feedback.

Deliverables and Intermediate Milestones: 

Collaborators:

• Simulation Interoperability Standards Organization
• Chalmers University
• Enterprise Dynamics
• Unigraphics
• Visual Components
• Simul8

Customers:

• Boeing
• Volvo
• Doyle Center

Sustainable and Lifecycle Information-based Manufacturing

Project 3.3. Testbed for standards and methods for sustainable manufacturing
Anticipated Completion Date: Q4, 2011

Project Overview:

The principal objective of the project is to develop testbeds to validate the information standards and methods through testing in different sustainable manufacturing contexts.

To meet the project’s objective, the following activities will be undertaken:

• Develop a methodology for testbeds based on prior experiences at NIST and develop a reference testbed architecture.
• Test information standards that support carbon output reporting and carbon credit trading
• Test information standards that support recycling, reuse, or disposal of manufactured products
• Validate and test information models for sustainable design and manufacturing.

Deliverables and Intermediate Milestones:

• Demonstration testbed to validate the different aspects of the work conducted throughout this program. The testbed will apply metrics for the performance of specific applications or procedures for zero-impact manufacturing (Q4, 2011).
• Development of model-based validation and testing techniques (Q4, 2011).
• Testing tools and test artifact definitions that support the validation of sustainability-related standards. (Q2, 2010).
• Prototype testing tools for validation of sustainability-related standards (Q4, 2011).

Collaborators:

• George Washington University (GWU)
• IBM
• SDOs: OMG, OAG, OASIS, ISO
• PDES Inc., ProSTEP
• IMS Project partners
• Other NIST OUs

Customers:

• Federal Agencies
• Standards development organization
• Testing services such as UL for information standards.