Sustainable Production and Digitalization - An Environmental Assessment of a Smart Factory and a Literature Review of Sustainable Digitalization

Abstract

This master thesis is one part of a larger project called Smart Factories. The overall aim with Smart Factories is to create a platform that can be used to spread knowledge about digitalization of industries and to increase the attractiveness for young adults to work in such industries. The project will generate a demonstrator of a digitalized factory that will be exhibited at the science center Universeum. The factory will produce VR glasses made out of corrugated paper and PMMA. This master thesis looks quantitatively at the environmental impact of the factory. It also includes a literature review about sustainable digitalization. The purpose of this thesis is thus divided into two parts, where the first one is to suggest improvements for the digitalized factory so as the environmental impact is reduced. The second part is to initiate a literature review of sustainable digitalization in order to identify topics for future studies. The purpose of the study is broken down into three objectives:  Identify five critical areas of the factory  Identify possible improvements of the factory  Identify to what extent the topic of sustainable digitalization is covered by scientific literature LCA is used in this master thesis to a large extent. The result from the analysis is that the five critical areas are the corrugated paper sheets, lenses, racks, rotation press and Eton Systems transporter. It was found that the largest reduction of the environmental impact can be obtained when the amount of consumables is decreased. Additionally, the environmental impact can be significantly reduced if recycled materials are used instead of virgin materials for the corrugated paper sheets and the racks. The production volumes and type of materials are thus important for the project managers to consider. The literature review show that it is relatively difficult to find reports about sustainable digitalization. Most of the covered reports touch upon the economic and social dimensions of sustainability and less focus is on the environmental dimension. More research is needed on some specific topics, highlighted by the authors of the reports covered in the literature review.