Expanding the ecological sustainability and social sustainability of manufacturing is of interest to governments, companies, communities and individuals. Interest among government and companies relates to manufacturing being re-shored and redistributed. Interest among communities and individuals is in people having more involvement in the production of what they consume: i.e. prosumption. Expansion of geographic distributions has potential to increase ecological sustainability, for example, by reducing long-distance transportation. Expansion of demographic distributions has potential to increase social sustainability, for example, by increasing the diversity of people involved in manufacturing.
Stephen Fox’s dissertation is based upon five scientific journal papers. In his dissertation Fox addresses three research gaps concerned with sustainable distributed manufacturing. In particular, the fundamental challenges of manufacturing trade-offs are addressed as follows: product originality, product complexity, and product unsustainability versus sustainable distributed manufacturing. Consideration of findings, suggests two complementary strategies for expanding sustainable manufacturing distributions: trade-off reduction and trade-off avoidance.
Overall, the research is novel through its inclusion of diverse technologies and distributions of manufacturing in order to determine their relative potential to improve the production of physical goods at more diverse locations by more diverse people.
Stephen Fox’s dissertation Three Fundamental Trade-offs in Expanding Sustainable Distributions of Manufacturing will be publicly examined at noon on Thursday 23rd April 2020 in accordance with circumstances permissible at that time within the scope of COVID-19 pandemic regulations. Because of the coronavirus, Tampere University’s dissertation defences are not organised as public events. The Opponent will be Professor Harri Haapasalo from University of Oulu. Professor Minna Lanz from the Faculty of Engineering and Natural Sciences at Tampere University will act as chairperson.
Because of the coronavirus, Tampere University’s dissertation defences are not organised as public events. However, it is possible to follow the public examinations via a remote connection.
The dissertation is available online: http://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-03-1551-1.