Sustainable Production Automation

Sustainable production automation, as an effective way to enable and expedite transitions to sustainability and enhance resource utilizations, attracts substantial efforts from researchers in both academy and industry. This book presents the recent development of innovative algorithms, models, heuristics, hardware and software in broad areas of sustainable production systems. It focuses on design, analysis and management of the processes involved in the product life cycle (from design to delivery to return) to have the minimal negative impacts on society (including environmental, economic and social). The contributors are experts from both universities and industrial research centers. The topics include: • An overview of sustainable manufacturing practices, including sustainability performance indicator, cutting edge examples, and future challenges. • A structural review of the state-of-the-art research of energy efficient manufacturing systems. • An energy sensitive control method for energy reduction in paint shops. • Introduction of flexible event-based information architecture (Tweeting Factory) for optimal energy saving in robot stations. • Transient analysis based optimal control of energy efficient productions. • Energy evaluation in multi-product manufacturing systems. • Formal models and analysis for uncertainty management in remanufacturing processes.