An integrated sustainability assessment framework: a case of turning process

Sustainable manufacturing is a valuable tool for measuring and enhancing the machining performance. The implementation of sustainability frameworks in concerned industries poses enormous challenges despite various frameworks available in the literature. Thus, the objective of this paper is to present an integrated sustainability assessment framework wherein two machining scenarios (dry and wet turning) have been analysed by conducting experiments based on the process for a manufactured component in an industry from economic and environmental perspectives. The study further evaluates the economic and environmental indicators such as cost per component and energy consumption for Taguchi array design using empirical relations to evaluate sustainability by grey relational analysis and further optimise the machining performance by particle swarm optimisation. The results, however, indicate the possibility of transitioning the machining process from wet to dry at specific operating conditions with improved performance. In addition to this, the study also presents an illustration of social sustainability assessment framework which has been proposed after consultation with various manufacturing industries in order to make it convenient for them to implement and enhance the sustainability aspects of the machining process.