Teaching Environmentally Benign Manufacturing

摘要

Teaching Environmentally Benign Manufacturing (EBM) presents the general challenges of teaching an application rather than a discipline. This is not too different from the challenges of teaching manufacturing about ten years ago. In that case we could rely heavily on successful practice and then develop principles to explain those successes. The principal success at that time was the Toyota Production System. Even today people continue to observe and write about why it works and its limitations. In the case of EBM, other than the real successes of many end of pipe solutions, many of the current ideas (LCA, DFE, Eco-efficiency, eco-industrial parks etc.) have yet to offer convincing proof that they actually work. Hence, without too much exaggeration, there is neither theory nor much reliable practice to teach. (This point of view is discussed in more detail in the last section of this paper.) There is however, a real and very important problem that we face as a society. This suggests that what we really have is a research problem, and that teaching should follow a research model. This should include open discussion, critical review of ideas and the generation and testing of hypotheses. Hence the teaching of EBM is an excellent opportunity to teach about research and critical thinking in a systems setting.