Sustainability Indicators for Finishing Operations based on Process Performance and Part Quality

Production engineers need to focus increasingly on the sustainability of manufacturing processes. Unfortunately, there are a confusingly high number of sustainability indicators available and they mostly focus on energy and material efficiency. These indicators are, however, not all appropriate for finishing operations. For example, many efficiency indicators relate to the material volume processed, but since the volume is very small in finishing operations, the material removal rarely is the best indicator. This paper discusses more appropriate efficiency indicators for finishing operations which are calculated as ratio of change in process performance or part quality divided by the needed resources. Three efficiency indicators based on average roughness, average peak-to-valley height and subjective part quality are then used in a case study on vibratory grinding. This study provides a starting point to apply more diverse performance and quality-oriented indicators for finishing processes.