DARWEEN – Data Acquisition and Process Framework for Efficient Ecological Assessment of Manufacturing Systems

Motivation

Recently, the European Commission presented a proposal to amend corporate sustainability reporting, which will put it on an equal footing with financial reporting. In this context, several environmental parameters, such as the amount of used recyclable materials and substances, the consumed energy, generated waste and emissions, and the ecological and carbon footprint, were determined as a basis for the evaluation of products. In contrast to production performance indicators, the necessary data for an environmental assessment is, as of now, not recorded continuously but only for specific cases, such as the need for certification. This is primarily due to the time-consuming data collection during the Life Cycle Assessment and the required expertise to identify the needed parameters. With various possible metrics and scoring systems, companies are unsure how and which parameters must be gathered to meet regulatory data needs in the production environment.

Objectives

The project's overall objective is to develop a framework that supports manufacturing companies in data gathering of ecological parameters by identifying and classifying the appropriate data needs. These goals are intended to further integrate the issue of sustainability into the digital transformation of manufacturing companies. The project objective comprises the following sub-goals: 

• Development of a parameter catalogue containing the relevant data needed for determining the ecological impacts of manufacturing processes in mechanical and plant engineering
• Description of a classification system for the identified parameters in terms of the need for data recording in the manufacturing process or at the plant level in relation to the maturity phase of manufacturing processes
• Proposition of a framework that companies can use to structure the identification of necessary ecological parameters and their collection 
• Identification of technological possibilities for data acquisition of individual parameters 
• Design of a roadmap to enable companies to apply the framework in their business context

Acknowledgement

The iwb would like to thank the German-French Academy for funding this research project.