Purpose

Sustainable manufacturing facilitates the development of products with lower environmental impact. Additive manufacturing (AM) processes are incorporated with sustainable characteristics such as minimum material consumption, energy efficiency and minimum transportation. The purpose of this paper is to report a study on sustainability evaluation of AM process using a grey-based approach.

Design/methodology/approach

Sustainable AM process is gaining importance. From this viewpoint, this paper presents the evaluation of sustainability of AM process. The evaluation model includes 3 enablers, 18 criteria and 54 attributes. Grey-based approach is used for sustainability evaluation. Expert inputs are used for computing the grey index. Expert inputs are obtained and they are aggregated at three levels to calculate the overall grey performance index, which indicates sustainability level of AM processes. Furthermore, weaker areas are identified through determination of grey performance importance index (GPII) values.

Findings

The calculated grey index is (3.510, 16.177), which implies that AM process is sustainable. Weaker attributes are determined on the basis of the computation of GPII values.

Practical implications

The study has been executed on the basis of the opinion from experts with practical experience. Hence, the inferences are found to be practically feasible. The identified weaker attributes from the study would enable the manufacturers and practitioners to focus more on weaker areas for enhancing the sustainability of AM processes. The study has made an evaluation from sustainability perspective of AM processes, which would enable practitioners to assess AM processes from TBL sustainability orientation.

Originality/value

The development of sustainability evaluation model and application of a grey-based approach for assessment of AM process are the original contributions of this study.

中文翻译：

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基于灰色方法的增材制造过程的可持续性评估

目的

可持续制造促进了对环境影响较小的产品的开发。增材制造（AM）工艺具有可持续性特征，例如最小的材料消耗，能源效率和最少的运输。本文的目的是报告一项基于灰色方法的AM过程可持续性评估研究。

设计/方法/方法

可持续的AM流程变得越来越重要。从这个角度出发，本文提出了对AM过程可持续性的评价。评估模型包括3个促成因素，18个标准和54个属性。基于灰色的方法用于可持续性评估。专家输入用于计算灰度指数。获得专家输入，并将其汇总为三个级别，以计算总体灰色绩效指标，该指标表示增材制造流程的可持续性水平。此外，通过确定灰色性能重要性指数（GPII）值来确定较弱的区域。

发现

计算得出的灰度指数为（3.510，16.177），这表明增材制造过程是可持续的。较弱的属性是根据GPII值的计算确定的。

实际影响

这项研究是根据具有实际经验的专家的意见进行的。因此，发现推断是切实可行的。研究确定的较弱的属性将使制造商和从业人员能够将更多的精力集中在较弱的领域，以增强增材制造过程的可持续性。该研究从增材制造过程的可持续性角度进行了评估，这将使从业人员能够从TBL可持续性导向评估增材制造过程。

创意/价值

可持续性评估模型的开发和基于灰色方法的AM评估过程的应用是本研究的最初贡献。