Sustainability

The supply of CRM to domestic companies is threatened by disruptions (e. g. trade conflicts or shortages). Relocating production to stable regions is often not possible in the context of CRM due to geological reasons. One way out is CE. From a network perspective, the resilience must be improved and expanded to include viability. In CE for resilience improvement, a distinction must be made between ex-post and ex-ante CE. Ex-post CE is used as a reaction to a disruption and ex-ante CE reduces the probability of a disruption occurring.

The aviation industry faces significant challenges in reducing the environmental impact of global air traffic. This results in the goal of net zero emissions by 2050. Innovations and new technologies must be implemented along the entire value chain to achieve this goal. In this context, investments and decisions have to be evaluated based on their potential to reduce environmental impacts. One method for operationalizing these issues is the life cycle assessment framework. This paper presents an analytical decision model for the potential assessment of LCA at aircraft manufacturers. The basis of the model is the derivation of criteria for the assessment and the identification of use cases along the value creation process. Based on the decision model, first concrete application scenarios are identified. (Only in German)

The Circular Economy (CE) is a form of economy that extends the use of products and resources by developing the linear supply chain (SC) to a circular SC. However, additional input factors are required for remanufacturing and recycling. Furthermore, these processes generate additional environmental impacts. It is questionable whether the circulation of products is only worthwhile from an economic point of view or whether it also brings environmental advantages. An approach that relates the economic impact of a product to its environmental impact is the Green Productivity Index (GPI). In the following, this index is developed for CE. Furthermore, this article examines how digitalization can positively affect the Green Productivity (GP) of CE. (Only in German)

Climate neutrality and digitisation are two future-relevant and interlinked topics that are gaining in importance for manufacturing companies. However, especially for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), it is often difficult to get an overview of the concepts and practical measures in these fields. This article presents a maturity model that offers companies practical assistance in combining the goals of climate neutrality and digitisation and in identifying suitable (digitisation) measures for the company to support the transformation towards climate-neutral production. (Only in German)

The impact of rapid technological change in a competitive global market is reaching small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) at an increasing rate; digitalization increases the interconnectedness among manufacturers, products and customers. Within this context, SME need to improve both their business processes and their technological capabilities in order to achieve internal and external sustainability goals, to be successful in the marketplace and to meet customer needs. This article discusses the opportunities of digitalization to improve sustainability by presenting two use cases from SME.

The manufacturing of products ties up energy as well as material resources. The awareness of consumers and producers as well as legislative activities to achieve a sustainable use of available resources are developing much too slowly. In this paper, a local remanufacturing approach is presented, which makes it possible to reduce resource consumption, to promote local enterprises and to offer efficient solutions for the regional reuse of goods.

Digitization and sustainable development are playing an important role in many areas, especially in production, although it is still unclear how they influence each other. First studies already addressed the question of how digitization can impact sustainability. It became clear that an evaluation method with indicators from all sustainability perspectives is needed. In this article, we will present a model-based evaluation method especially for ecological and economic sustainability, taking digital textile printing as an example. (Only in German)