The KES Sustainable Design and Manufacturing Society

About the SDM Society

Led by Prof Rossi Setchi of Cardiff University (shown right), the KES Sustainable Design and Manufacturing (SDM) Group is for those interested in industrial sustainability.

Our focus is on the development of innovative, advanced and environmentally friendly technology, together with its effective and sustainable implementation via suitable hardware, software or management systems to applications within the manufacturing industries.

The quest for sustainability is transforming the competitive landscape. Sustainability is driving innovation, social and economic development, and contributes to significant improvements in health and quality of life. Our work in this area aims to enable the manufacturing industry to grow by adopting more advanced technologies, and at the same time improve its sustainability by reducing its environmental impact.

The Group is focused on three priority areas:-

- Sustainable products and processes
- Sustainable manufacturing systems and enterprises, and
- Decision support tools for sustainability.

The application areas are the product life cycle including design, manufacture, assembly, industrial control, inspection, fault diagnostics, and disposal, and activities such as modelling and simulation, production planning and control, logistics and supply chain management.

What do we mean by Sustainable Design and Manufacturing?

Sustainable design and manufacturing includes both the manufacturing of "sustainable" products and the sustainable manufacturing of all products. It also includes the development of sustainable manufacturing systems and enterprises and the study of the societal impact of manufacturing. Furthermore, our ambition is to promote the use of intelligent decision support for sustainable manufacturing and product life cycle management, and the development of advanced information and knowledge-based systems which deliver industrial sustainability.

Topics

Applicable topics include, but are not limited to:-

Sustainable Products and Processes
Eco-design and eco-innovation, closed-loop design, design for environment/sustainability, environmentally conscious manufacturing processes and products, energy, resource management and efficiency, sustainable manufacturing processes, re-manufacturing, recycling and design for assembly/disassembly.

Sustainable Manufacturing Systems and Enterprises
Product life cycle management, end-of-life strategies, energy management and efficiency improvement of manufacturing systems, predictive maintenance and service for sustainable manufacturing, green supply chains, green logistics, sustainable business models, sustainable factory, societal impact of manufacturing systems, policy aspects of sustainable manufacturing.

Decision Support Tools for Sustainability
Life cycle assessment of manufacturing processes and products, intelligent decision support for sustainable manufacturing, virtual and collaborative environments for sustainability, user/consumer behavioural models, information management/product life cycle management, prognostics, intelligent decision support for sustainable manufacturing including expert systems, knowledge-based systems, knowledge discovery and data mining, knowledge representation and management, pervasive sensing, context-aware systems, mobile computing and systems, machine learning, virtual reality, intelligent information management.