Manufacturing and the Science of Sustainability

A new area, called Sustainability Science, is engaging large system scientists to address the challenges that face the future of human society on planet earth. In this paper, the methods and frameworks of diverse disciplines are reviewed and compared with those of the manufacturing community. The re...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Gutowski, Timothy G.
Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering
Format: Article
Language:en_US
Published: Springer Science + Business Media B.V. 2013
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/78334
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7019-6887
Description
Summary:A new area, called Sustainability Science, is engaging large system scientists to address the challenges that face the future of human society on planet earth. In this paper, the methods and frameworks of diverse disciplines are reviewed and compared with those of the manufacturing community. The results show significant differences between disciplines, including the level of urgency expressed. Synthesizing these divergent viewpoints, this paper makes suggestions for needed research on “sustainable manufacturing”. The main message is that manufacturing needs to significantly increase the boundaries of its analysis to be able to understand its effect at the global scale.