Manufacturing strategies for efficiency in energy and resources use: The role of metal shaping processes

Abstract

Manufacturing sector nowadays has to deal with the global need to reduce the environmental impact of human activity. As manufacturing accounts for a significant portion of the global CO2 emissions, scientific research should be addressed to understand the environmental impact of manufacturing processes and, in the meantime, to take advantage of their full potential in reducing the overall CO2 emissions. The present review paper aims at describing the role of metal shaping processes in reducing the environmental impact across different stages of metal components life. Actually, an increased consciousness concerning both the environmental performances of manufacturing processes and their potential to enable circular economy practices can uncover and unlock new energy and resource efficiency strategies.Besides the straightforward role in the manufacturing stage, the impact of these processes in others life stages (mainly material production and End-of-life) is analyzed. The review paper aims both at outlining the already developed scientific research in the domain of energy and resource efficiency and at highlighting the role of metal shaping processes in putting in place energy and resource efficient manufacturing strategies. Concerning the unit process level, quantified improvements in environmental indicators with varying processes parameters, machine tools architectures, used process and manufacturing approach itself have been analyzed. As far as material efficiency is concerned, both innovative recycling as well as reuse strategies (remanufacturing, reshape and relocate) implemented by means of metal shaping processes are described. The idea is to provide a comprehensive picture of environmental aspects of metal shaping processes analyzing the developed scientific research, looking at them from a new perspectives and outlining research needs.