• Energy Research
• 12. Responsible consumption close
• 9. Industry and infrastructure close
• 11. Sustainability close

Manufacturing is an important pillar of the society providing goods and services of primary importance for supporting the quality of human life. One of the most pressing challenges facing Europe and the world is the need for a transition to resource-efficient economy. Sustainability, in a manufacturing context, means enabling a diverse pool of industrial participants to pursue economic growth without undermining social and environmental issues of workforce management, building community relations, use of natural resources, carbon dioxide emissions, waste management and product and services responsibility. This chapter discusses on the relevance of sustainability from manufacturing perspective, sustainable manufacturing definition, strategies, impacts and approaches and describes a roadmap for sustainable manufacturing.

This paper presents results of a case study in which a life cycle cost estimation tool has been developed and tested. Improving sustainability requires holistic information on the life cycle costs of the system. There is a need to increase the transparency of decision-making by informing customers about the costs of the solutions when taking into consideration the whole life cycle. This benefits both the supplier and the customer in forms of showing the total costs of the system and selecting the system with the lowest total costs.

Since the manufacturing industry is one of the major global energy consumers and carbon emitters, energy efficiency has emerged as one of the industry's key drivers. Additionally, digital technologies offer companies significant opportunities to boost productivity and generate cost savings while simultaneously reducing the environmental impact. This study establishes a framework for economic and environmental indicators supporting smart manufacturing and asset management operations. The framework contributes to the sustainability assessment of digital solutions focused on increasing energy efficiency. In this setting, the emphasis is particularly on LCC (Life Cycle Costing) and LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) indicators. The approach is being tested in four different types of pilot companies in the manufacturing sector. The study examines the indicators from several angles at the process and machine levels. In the next phase of our research, software tools for the energy efficiency-oriented online LCC and LCA will be developed to make the indicator framework practical.

Manufacturers need be proactive, innovative and operationally efficient to succeed in the current business environment. The transition toward sustainable manufacturing requires new approaches in the design, manufacture and use of products and services. These approaches need to take into account the network of stakeholders who influence and can be influenced by the sustainability of the product in the course of its life cycle. This paper presents results of a case study that used and tested methods and tools developed for creating a sustainable business model for a manufacturing company. The main research questions addressed here are: how to develop a sustainable business model; and how to explicitly illustrate to potential customers the life cycle costs of different solutions.

This paper presents a model for addressing sustainability governance in manufacturing networks. The model developed addresses sustainability governance within a manufacturing network as a process to guide the activities of all actors involved toward sustainable development and performance throughout the product life cycle. According to the model, there are three main tasks of sustainability governance: analysing, organising, and developing. These three main tasks are in accordance with company-level approaches but highlight the need for multilevel network governance.

In the literature, sustainability in customer-supplier relationships from the perspective of manufacturing companies has not been extensively studied, although there is pressure both within and outside of the companies. This paper studies how manufacturing companies view sustainability in their business and the sustainability-related challenges in customer-supplier relation-ships. We explore the theme by presenting findings from 12 recent interviews with five manufacturing companies. The interviewees saw sustainability as con-taining a future-oriented perspective of sustainable operations and a practical point of view. Sustainability-related challenges in customer-supplier relation-ships were mentioned as turning sustainability into customer value and financial profit, identifying customers’ sustainability needs, managing data related to sus-tainability, and managing sustainability through the value chain. The paper pre-sents practical perspectives on sustainability in manufacturing companies and a framework for identifying customer needs related to sustainability. Managerial and theoretical implications consist of clarifying scattered viewpoints about sus-tainability in customer-supplier relationships in the manufacturing industry.