Effects of Climate Change on Factory Life Cycle

Climate change and global warming have negative consequences for humans and nature. While many research activities analyze the effects of industrial production on global warming and aim to develop actions using rare resources more efficiently and reducing CO2-emission, the effects of climate change on industrial production is rarely discussed. Hence, manufacturing companies are considered in research as cause of climate change and not as affected by climate change. Thus, there is no systematic consideration of effects of climate change in factory planning. This leads to expensive adaptions within factory life cycle. For this reason the paper identifies ecological, economical and social changes caused by the climate change. These changes are analyzed on their effects on factories and prioritized according to their risk for the company. Subsequently, the identified changes are matched to different functions of factory planning. The matching allows developing planning-related and preventive strategy to cope with changes during factory life cycle.