The pace of technology and shifting scientific paradigms have shaken the foundations of our planet. Robert Theobald compares the acceleration of change in our lives to riding the rapids: "We can decide whether we're going to go down the rapids and enjoy ourselves, or go down the rapids and be terrified. But we can't say we're not going to go down them at all."

This volumes consists of 59 peer-reviewed papers, presented at the International Conference on Sustainable Design and Manufacturing (SDM-16) held in Chania, Crete Greece in April 2016. Leading-edge research into sustainable design and manufacturing aims to enable the manufacturing industry to grow by adopting more advanced technologies, and at the same time improve its sustainability by reducing its environmental impact. SDM-16 covers a wide range of topics from sustainable product design ...

New legislation, rising energy costs and increasing demand for green credentials have moved sustainable IT up the business agenda. Yet the term ‘green IT’ still means a variety of things to a variety of people – whether that’s sustainably managing and procuring IT assets, ethically recycling hardware or using IT to enable carbon footprint reduction. This ebook looks at these different aspects and offers advice on how to incorporate sustainable practices in business strategy.

Learn how businesses can survive—and thrive—in the midst of constant change, with this informative and accessible guide.In Clockspeed, Charles Fine draws on a decade's worth of research at M.I.T.'s Sloan School of Management to introduce a new vocabulary for understanding the forces of competition and making strategic decisions that will determine the destiny of your company, as well as your industry.Taking inspiration from the world of biology, Fi...

This book provides comprehensive coverage of issues that facility managers in the property industry need to understand and apply in the pursuit of value for money over the life span of built facilities. The authors introduce the fast-growing discipline of facility management, examine the core competencies that facility managers should possess and study different contemporary drivers of change. The book emphasises the need to consider facilities management issues at the pre-design stage of ...

Environmental challenges such as pollution, climate change, water and natural resources depletion and dwindling bio-diversity are true threats to the survival of our civilization, forcing us to learn how to act now. Fortunately this is exactly what this book does: presenting real life cases, along with theory, methodologies and tools demonstrating how eco-innovation can support sustainable economic growth and save our planet for future generations.Following an introduction describi...

A COMPLETE GUIDE TO IMPLEMENTING A GREEN SUPPLY CHAINThis detailed resource provides a stage-by-stage production methodology within the life cycle of a product to ensure environmental compliance and economic goals. After covering basic concepts and background, Green Supply Chain Management: Product Life Cycle Approach discusses green engineering technologies, green value chain management, and green information management systems.The book delivers the knowledge to...

Challenged by the recent economic crisis, the building and construction industry is currently seeking new orientation and strategies. Here mass customisation is uncovered as a key strategy in helping to meet this challenge. The term mass customisation denotes an offering that meets the demands of each individual customer, whilst still being produced with mass production efficiency. Today mass customisation is emerging from a pilot stage into a scalable and sustainable strategy...Th...

Whole System Design is increasingly being seen as one of the most cost-effective ways to both increase the productivity and reduce the negative environmental impacts of an engineered system.A focus on design is critical, as the output from this stage of the project locks in most of the economic and environmental performance of the designed system throughout its life, which can span from a few years to many decades. Indeed, it is now widely acknowledged that all designers - particul...

Society seems to be tied irrevocably to long-term patterns of resource use, and to producing unassimilatable waste, emissions, and ongoing environmental degradation. There also are seemingly irresolvable dilemmas between humanity and nature, society and ecology, and utility and beauty, where each decision we make seems to cause some harm. To change from our present path and resolve these, we must have the courage to break from traditions and use our knowhow to progressively and creatively ...

The book aims to provide a basis for design and construction of resource-efficient buildings. The main concepts follow the vision of a European Sustainable Building as defined in the 2-years Smart-ECO research project funded by European Commission under the Sixth Framework Program. The focus is concentrated on innovations enabling the building sector to meet the requirements originating from the sustainability concept.Innovation is considered at different scales: micro (product, se...

Innovation in product design starts with materials. Developing successful commercial products demands a sound understanding of the materials that go into those products—their uses, their costs, their lifetime performance. However, the valuable knowledge of materials engineers is often not fully leveraged in the creative phase of the product design cycle. Gessinger seeks to bridge this gap that exists in many companies.Written from the bottom-up perspective of the engineer or scientist on a...