In recent years, significant advancements in technology and increasing global competition makes “sustainable” a major component of the missions for industrial enterprises, including manufacturing and service enterprises. There are two-fold considerations in sustainability: manufacturing of “sustainable” products, and sustainable manufacturing of all products. The former includes: manufacturing of renewable energy, energy efficiency, green building, and other “green” and social equity-related products, and the latter emphasizes: sustainable manufacturing of all products taking into account the full sustainability/total life-cycle issues related to the products manufactured. At present, and in the foreseeable future, there are significant opportunities to improve energy productivity through energy-aware automation of cyber-physical systems by smartening the end-to-end energy supply chains encompassing energy production, distribution, and consumption. Energy productivity will become an important dimension, which can be viewed as a natural evolution towards leaner, cleaner and greener systems. Meanwhile, sustainability is the driving force for innovative products, processes and systems for next generation of manufacturing. We invite papers on sustainability considerations including associated modeling techniques, algorithms, and applications.
