AVS 50th International Symposium
    Technology for Sustainability Thursday Sessions
       Session AT-ThM

Invited Paper AT-ThM3
Development and Implementation of Green Processes for Manufacturing

Thursday, November 6, 2003, 9:00 am, Room 320

Session: Development and Implementation of Sustainable Processes
Presenter: N. Krishnan, University of California, Berkeley
Authors: D.A. Dornfeld, University of California, Berkeley
N. Krishnan, University of California, Berkeley
Correspondent: Click to Email
Environmental and health issues associated with manufacturing (specially semiconductor manufacturing) are growing in importance and offer strong incentives to reduce resource use and minimize waste. The large flows of materials and energy throughout the economy lead to a wide range of upstream environmental impacts. A strategy for a comprehensive design for environment (DFE) tool to assess the environmental and health impacts of semiconductor manufacturing and to feed this information back into semiconductor equipment and process development cycles is presented. This work builds upon previous research at Berkeley such as environmental value analysis system (EnV-S). A comprehensive approach including (i) scope considering upstream life cycle impacts and facilitating integration into downstream environmental assessments and (ii) metrics supporting a wide range of local and global environmental and health metrics, is proposed. Ideally, feedback loops from DFE tools can inform designers of equipment and processes and aid environmental decision making by regulators, industry suppliers, utilities, etc. A further goal is to promote the broader use of this tool to support industrial ecology. The tool can also have a strong educational component if used in a classroom environment to support the teaching of environmentally conscious manufacturing and industrial ecology. There are several significant intellectual hurdles: what level of detail is required, how can we link upstream life cycle impacts and facilitate downstream environmental assessments of electronics, what local and global environmental metrics are needed (e.g. for health hazard issues), and can the tool be an effective policy planning instrument? The paper will address these issues based on our experience so far with a much reduced scope of effort in EnV-S. The results of this work should establish the feasibility of real, effective design and manufacturing for reduced environmental impact.