Integration of reliability, service and renewables for sustainable manufacturing initiatives

Today's manufacturing industry is confronted with many challenges. The most significant challenges are the intense global competition, supply chain volatility, environmental sustainability, and ever-changing consumer needs. Next-generation manufacturing is envisioned as a service oriented, demand driven, customer centric and low-carbon operation paradigm. If manufacturing firms can successfully adopt or transition to this new operational mode, they would gain unprecedented competitive edges that allow them not only to survive now, but also to thrive with a steady growth in the future. In this paper, we present some preliminary findings and also explore new visionary concepts of next-generation manufacturing operations by focusing on three critical aspects: 1) integrated productservice system design; 2) adaptive inventory model in nonstationary demand settings; and 3) onsite wind and solar energy generation and integration. We also highlight new opportunities brought to next-generation manufacturers by additive and cloud manufacturing, big data informatics, and circular economy.