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2015 International Forum on Sustainable Manufacturing

Value Creation through Sustainable Manufacturing

Increasing manufacturing productivity to improve business profitability and return to shareholders alone is no longer sufficient. Customer awareness about sustainability as well as regulatory pressures is now forcing companies to also examine environmental and societal implications to all stakeholders including customers, employees, suppliers and all others affected by its activities. This means that industry is now in need of business practices that are capable of generating sustainable value—that is, creating economic, environmental and societal value for shareholders and all other stakeholders without taking it away from any one group.

Can sustainable manufacturing become the engine for such sustainable value creation? Sustainable manufacturing calls for an emphasis on the total life-cycle, from pre-manufacturing, manufacturing and use to post-use stages to consider the economic, environmental and societal implications at the product, process and systems levels. Practices that will yield positive net returns from a triple bottom line perspective for all stakeholders—at least in the short run—are rare. Nevertheless, can the total life-cycle based sustainable manufacturing framework be used as a proposition for creating value for all parties affected by manufacturing practices, within the plant and across the supply chain, in the long-term?

The 5th International Forum on Sustainable Manufacturing will bring together world-renowned researchers and practitioners together to discuss how companies can create sustainable value through sustainable manufacturing practices. The event will include:

  • Recent research advances in sustainable manufacturing that will examine sustainable value creation opportunities at the product, process and systems (including supply chain) levels as well as,
  • Cutting-edge practices used by industry leaders to share sustainable value creation opportunities as well as challenges to sustainable manufacturing.

 

Special features of the 5th International Forum on Sustainable Manufacturing:

  • A panel discussion: on “Making the Business Case for Sustainable Manufacturing”, moderated by Richard Neal from IMTI Inc., based on the Sustainable Manufacturing Roadmapping Workshop held at the University of Kentucky.
  • Emerging researcher presentations: a series of presentations by leading young researchers engaged in cutting-edge research in sustainable manufacturing and related areas sponsored by a National Science Foundation grant.

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