Sustainability seminar to be held today (May 6)
Environmental, Regulatory, Ethical and Economic Impacts of Nanomanufacturing
With nanotechnology moving from development to commercialization at a more rapid rate, so too are calls for a more comprehensive understanding of the production costs, environmental and occupational health risks, and broader societal impacts associated with various nanomanufacturing processes. The objective of this research is to assess and probe issues with direct implications for the nanomanufacturing technologies under development at the National Science Foundation Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center for High-rate Nanomanufacturing (CHN), including a carbon nanotube memory device and a biosensor. Results will help to guide the overall development of a sustainable production system for nanomanufactured products. Several distinct, yet complementary research areas will be broadly discussed that address societal implications, but most of this presentation will focus on methodologies to determine commercialization decisions, and the tradeoffs of industrial hygiene costs of manufacturing in an uncertain regulatory environment. The CHN is one of the few NSF Centers that is concurrently addressing technology development along with societal implications of its prototype products.
Students Game to Learn about Green Supply Chains
The desire to address complex technological and social issues in an engaged manner inspired the development of a prototype board game created to raise the awareness of environmental issues in engineering. Over the past decade, both massively multiplayer games and simulation games have reached new levels of sophistication and retained enormous mainstream audiences. Developments in digital technology allow new opportunities to engage students in collaborative and active learning. Designed for in-class play by undergraduate and graduate engineering students as well as business students, the game structure is based on team competition of companies in the automobile supply chain, with the game objective set to achieve the highest profit and lowest environmental detriment.
The game is played using teams of suppliers in the manufacturing supply chain in the automotive industry. Within the teams (representing materials and parts suppliers, as well as the auto manufacturer), students take on roles for managers of their companies. During the 10-round game, each company in the supply chain takes its turn to invest and select among different technologies in three areas for each company: production, storage and waste disposal. There are tradeoffs in investment costs and green values for each technology option, and there is a hierarchy to the innovation options available for each turn. The student teams work within their budget to try to create the most profitable and green supply chain. Successful game strategy requires both cooperation and competition for players to succeed.