Virtual Verification and Validation for Sustainable Manufacturing

The concept of sustainable manufacturing (SM) is discussed, recent development on enabling technologies for SM are surveyed to identify promising research subjects, and virtual verification and validation (V&V) is focused to enhance the sustainability of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). A case-study computer aided engineering (CAE) system has been developed to reduce the needs of physical prototyping and tests in product developments. The effectiveness of the prototyped system is elaborated in terms of (1) significant savings from replacing numerous physical experiments by virtual tests, (2) shortened design cycles, and (3) the possibility of exploring a large design space for product optimization. The improvements at all these aspects contribute to system sustainability greatly.