Current status, challenges and opportunities of sustainable ultra-precision manufacturing

Abstract

Ultra-precision manufacturing (UPM) is a promising manufacturing technology for fabricating micro-components and its production volume raises in the coming future due to a significant increase in the production volume for highly technological products nowadays. Therefore, UPM industries are accountable for executing sustainability practices to minimize negative environmental impacts from their manufacturing activities. However, sustainable UPM is difficult to execute practically up to now due to different aspects such as technology and knowledge gap. With a high speed of technology advancement nowadays, UPM industries enable to leverage this technological chance and employ the Internet of Things (IoT) technique to move UPM toward sustainability. Therefore, in this article, the current status and future perspective of sustainable UPM, the major research and technological gap between UPM and sustainability development, specific technical challenges for integrated IoT to UPM for sustainability goal are discussed and revealed to promote sustainable UPM. And consequently, a preliminary framework of IoT based UPM system with particular suggestions was firstly presented for facilitating sustainable UPM and acts as the reference to related industries and academia for further developing this novel technique in the future.