Sustainable Manufacturing and Life Cycle Engineering Research Group @ UNSW  
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Welcome to
 
Sustainability in Manufacturing & Life Cycle Engineering
Research Group @ UNSW

 

What is Life Cycle Engineering (LCE)

Life Cycle Engineering (LCE) is defined as “Sustainability-oriented product development activities within the scope of one to several product life cycles. The methods and tools used in life cycle engineering must support reducing the total environmental impact associated with technology change and volume increase from one product generation to another, in order to ensure that new product technologies stay within their environmental space as derived from the planetary boundaries”. Several methods, such as LCA (Life Cycle Assessment), LCC (Life-Cycle Costing), and Eco-design, are applied in order to analyze the data and make decision during the upstream and downstream of the product development. LCE is an iterative process for continuous improvement of the sustainable performance of the product, product, process, system and the facility involved during the product life cycle, as shown in the below figure.

Our research strengths

  • Eco-design
  • Low carbon manufacturing
  • Energy efficiency evaluation in manufacturing
  • Carbon foot print assessment
  • Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Life Cycle Costing (LCC)
  • Sustainable supply chain management
  • End-of-Life products treatment, including reuse, remanufacturing, and recycling

The Sustainable Manufacturing and Life Cycle Engineering Research Group at UNSW was established in 1998 within the School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering. Various industrial and student projects in the field of LCE have been conducted by high quality researchers in LCE during the past decade. The latest achievement is the establishment of new collaboration with Technische Universität Braunschweig (Germany) under the name of Joint German-Australian Research Group in Sustainable Manufacturing and Life Cycle Management in 2009. This collaboration focuses on making multinational manufacturing processes and resource consumption more sustainable.

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SMLCE News

Awards and achievements

Professor Kara presented a keynote opening speech at the International Conference on Axiomatic Design, 2019 .

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Congratulations to Dr.Shiva Abdoli on recieving her PhD from The University of New South Wales.

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Shiva Abdoli attended 69th CIRP General Assembly, Birmingham, UK and presented a paper Titled "System interaction, System of Systems, and environmental impact of products.

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A prestigious Scientia PhD scholarship is available for qualified and enthusiastic candidate with the title of:Global Production Networks and their Planetary Boundaries.

If you are interested follow the link.

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Congratulations to Dr.Peng Wang on recieving his PhD from The University of New South Wales.

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Professor Kara will give a talk about his eight years of experience teaching the complex subject of sustainability. Sustainability: the Grand Challenge of our Society and the Role of University Education.

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Ashley Thornton a PhD student from Sustainability in Manufacturing and Life Cycle Engineering Research group submitted his PhD thesis in March.

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Gwendolyn Foo, PhD candidate and researcher at SMLCE, has been awarded "Women in Engineering Research Top-Up Scholarship"

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Delegation from BMBF Parliamentary State Secretary Mr.Rachel and DAAD_Germany visited Joint German-Australian Research Group in UNSW

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Peng Wang and Shiva Abdoli received the prestigious faculty postdoctoral writing fellowship.

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Professor Kara has been recognised as the field leader under the category of Manufacturing and Machinery, Australian Research Report.

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Shiva Abdoli has been selected as UNSW ambassador to attend the 2018 Rising Stars women in engineering workshop in Hong Kong.

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Professor Kara had a keynote speech in UNSW Engineering Education Showcase

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Shiva Abdoli has been on a research visit in Braunschweig University of Technology (TU Braunschweig) in Germany.

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Professor Kara has presented a keynote speech in CIRP Life Cycle Engineering Conference 2018 in Copenhagen , Titled "Target-Driven Life Cycle Engineering: Staying within the Planetary Boundaries"

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In a one-day workshop, representatives of the Open Hybrid LabFactory of the TU Braunschweig (Germany), representatives of the UNSW and companies from the region discussed the cooperation

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Shiva Abdoli has presented a paper in 2017 IEEE International Conference on Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management (IEEM) in Singapore, Titled "A review of modelling approaches for conceptual design of complex engineering systems (CESs)"

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Ashley Thornton has presented a paper in 2017 IEEE International Conference on Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management (IEEM) in Singapore, Titled "Concurrent scheduling of a job shop and microgrid to minimize energy costs under due date constraints"

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Fifteen years with first-year students and still learning

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Peng Wang has presented a paper in 16th Waste Management and Landfill Symposium in Italy , Titled "The Role of Circular Economy, Consumption Reduction, and Material Efficiency in Peak Waste"

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Congratulations to Georg for winning the Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering School Award of the 2017 Engineering Postgraduate Research Symposium.

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Big congratulations Ashley Thornton for winning the 3 Minutes thesis presentation competition in Faculty level.

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Peng Wang has been on a research exchange to Technical University of Denmark.

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Congratulations to Ashley and Georg for winning the 3 Minutes thesis presentation competition.

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Congratulations to Professor Sami Kara for recieving the prestigious Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Teaching Excellence.

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Congratulations to Dr.Samira Alvandi on recieving her PhD from The University of New South Wales.

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Congratulations to Dr.Wei Hua on recieving her PhD from The University of New South Wales.

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Georg Bienert has presented a paper in CIRP Conference on Manufacturing Systems May 2017 Taichung Taiwan , Titled "Delivery lot splitting as an enabler for cross-docking and fast delivery"

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Shiva Abdoli has presented a paper in CIRP design international conference June 2016 Stockholm Sweden , Titled "Designing Warehouse Logical Architecture by Applying Object Oriented Model Based System Engineering"

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Ashley went on the NICTA Optimisation Summer School in early 2016

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Congratulations to Wei Hua Chen for having the Best Presentation in Mechanical Engineering at the 2015 Engineering Postgraduate Symposium.

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Congratulations to Dr. Pouya Ghadimi on recieving his PhD from The University of New South Wales.

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Congratulations to Dr. Bernard Kornfeld on recieving his PhD from The University of New South Wales.

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LCE2015

SMLCE organised The 22nd CIRP Conference on Life Cycle Engineering (LCE2015) on 7-9 April, Sydney, Australia.

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SMLCE 2014 End-of-Year Party. Thank you for the hard work and we get ready for next year.

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"Robots put to work on e-waste", robotic system with cognitive ability for disassembly of products.

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Congratulations to Dr. Seung Jin Kim on recieving his PhD from The University of New South Wales.

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Pouya Ghadimi presented his poster "Energy Monitoring and Smart Grid Application in Manufacturing" in National Postgraduate Student Energy Awards 2014, organised by Australian Institute of Energy. The poster received Encouragement Award.

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Shiva Abdoli, PhD candidate and researcher at SMLCE, has been awarded "Women in Engineering Research Top-Up Scholarships"

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Prof. Sami Kara has been awarded "The Australian Awards for University Teaching".

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The paper, "Integrated Material and Energy Flow Analysis towards Energy Efficient Manufacturing", was awarded Leo Award for the best paper. The paper was presented in LCE2014 by Professor Sami Kara.

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The paper, "Weighted Additive Fuzzy Goal Programming-based Decision Support System for Green Supply Network Design", was awarded IEEM2013 Best Paper Award. The paper was presented in IEEM2013 by Kanda Boonsothonsatit.

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Professor Sami Kara has been awarded the ARC Supervisor award for the second time in 2013 

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WSBC

20th CIRP Conference on Life Cycle Engineering 2013, Singapore 17-19 April 2013.

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WSBC

A win-win venture for Yennora and UNSW. Energy flow and material flow in ALCOA of Australia Rolled Products – Yennora (ARP) have been monitored and anaylsed. This informaion shows the usage of energy in the system as well as the opportunity of cost saving.

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Wen Li

Wen Li attended AMCRC's INNOVATIVITY® programs early this year, which has been a refressing and inspiring experience for him to think out of the everyday research. In June, he presented his work at the AMCRC PhD symposium in Melbourne. +More Info

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WSBC

As part of the sustainability cockpit project funded by ARC linkage scheme, 10 researchers from JGARG visited ALCOA of Australia Rolled Products – Yennora (ARP) to present and to discuss the current findings of the material and energy flow analysis.

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WSBC

Sustainability for manufacturing in Western Sydney. ARC funding approved for research into carbon footprint measurement.

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Wen Li

The Advanced Manufacturing CRC (AMCRC) PhD Introduction:

Wen Li, a PhD candidate and researcher at LCEM who has sucessfully developed unit process models for predicting energy consumption in manufacturing processes. +More Info

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Dean's Award 2011

PhD student Supachai Vongbunyong was awarded with "Dean's Award for Excellence in Postgraduate Research 2011" under the research theme: Digital Future. +More Info

"Green research for a brighter future", The Joint German-Australian Research Group (JGARG) in Australia's Best Manufacturing magazine (Sept 2011).

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WenLi at IWF

The Joint German-Australian Research Group (JGARG) successfully hosted a workshop on Energy and Resource Efficiency in Manufacturing on June 8th, 2011 at the UNSW in Sydney.

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Prospective and exchange students at UNSW

bullet We are seeking highly motivated PhD and master students interested in Life Cycle Engineering and sustainable manufacturing research at The University of New South Wales. +More Info

Activity calendar

bullet 27th CIRP Life Cycle Engineering Conference- Grenoble, France 13th -15th May 2020 +More Info

bullet The 69th CIRP General Assembly - Birmingham, UK 18th -24th Aug 2019 +More Info

bullet The 26th CIRP Conference on Life Cycle Engineering in Purdue 7th May-9th May 2018+More Info

bullet The 25th CIRP Conference on Life Cycle Engineering in Copenhagen 30th April-2nd May 2018+More Info

bullet The 24th CIRP Conference on Life Cycle Engineering in Kamakura, Japan 8-10 March 2017+More Info

bullet The 23th CIRP Conference on Life Cycle Engineering in Berlin, Japan 22-24 May 2016

bullet The 22nd CIRP Conference on Life Cycle Engineering - Sydney, Australia 7-9 April 2015 +More Info

bullet The 65th CIRP General Assembly - Cape Town, South Africa 23 - 29 Aug 2015 +More Info

 

 

 
Sustainable Manufacturing and Life Cycle Engineering Research Group, School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, UNSW, Sydney NSW 2052, Australia
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Authorised by Prof. S. Kara • Last updated October 22, 2019