Environmental impact assessment of manufacturing processes using a combinatorial mathematics based decision making method

This paper presents a methodology for environmental impact assessment of manufacturing processes using a combinatorial mathematics based decision making method. An ‘environmental impact assessment index’ is proposed that evaluates and ranks the manufacturing processes for producing a given engineering product or component. The index is obtained from an ‘environmental impact assessment factors function’ considering environmental impact assessment factors and their relative importance for the considered application. An example is included to illustrate the approach.