Investigating the sustainability of a high-energy consuming industrial process to achieve total quality

Abstract

In the last century, the quality factor is seen as the key to success of each industry. In industrial companies, total quality management (TQM) principles have been introduced to achieve specific innovations in product and process development, though the continuous improvement (CI). Simultaneously, industrial companies think sustainable manufacturing as a means to create innovation, respecting environmental, economic and social themes. In fact, when a product reach the maturity stage of its life cycle, the improvements are no longer on product itself, but on its production process, optimising energy and resources use, eliminating waste, adopting sustainable end-of-life (EoL) policies, and reducing costs. Indeed, industrial processes require large consumption of resources during the product manufacturing phase. In this context, the paper aims to create a link between sustainable manufacturing and TQM principles, defining a new methodology that uses life cycle assessment (LCA) to assess the impacts of industrial processes inside the existing 'plan, do, check, act' (PDCA) method.