Consultants can help managers cut costs and create new values by instituting real‐time monitoring and eliminating inefficiencies in the use of resources all along a product’s life cycle. These inefficiencies include incomplete utilization of material and energy resources, poor process controls, product defects, waste storage costs, discarded packaging, costs passed on to consumers for pollution or low energy efficiency, and the ultimate loss of resources through disposal and dissipative use. Poor resource productivity also can entail costs for waste disposal and regulatory penalties. Methods that are less energy‐intensive and more labor‐intensive are more sustainable environmentally and socially.
New Mindset
As a result of changes in materials and processes, engineering professionals will have to expand the purview of their design parameters. A larger, more integrated design for facilities and manufacturing processes is called for. This is where design for environment comes in: DFE examines the life cycle of the product and considers not only its primary use but the environmental consequences of its production, assembly, testing, servicing, and recycling. In designing an eco‐industrial park, for example, manufacturing processes would be linked to material flows and to energy flows. As a result, the design period and overall costs would be higher. Return on investment, however, would be much shorter (see Sections 7.3 and 7.3.1).
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