Research on Virtual Manufacturing Based on Green Manufacturing

As a new organization and management model, virtual enterprise has attracted the attention of many scholars inside and outside the country. From the current information, its research mainly focuses on the system structure of the virtual enterprise system and the information system architecture, modeling methods, the decision-making method for virtual enterprise creation, and the operation and management methods of the virtual enterprise system. There is very little literature on the relationship between virtual companies and environmental protection in domestic literature. The virtual enterprise model has been rapidly promoted in the manufacturing industry. Today, the manufacturing industry is on the one hand the pillar industries that create wealth, but at the same time it is the main source of environmental pollution. According to the statistics. The world's manufacturing industry produces about 5.5 billion tons of non-hazardous wastes and 700 million tons of hazardous wastes each year [1]. In view of this, the study of virtual environmental issues should be an important issue for virtual enterprise research.

1 The Necessity of Green Manufacturing for Enterprises

With the establishment of the WTO, the tariff trade barriers in foreign trade are being cancelled or transformed and gradually emerge as green trade barriers. Many countries have taken the environmental standard access conditions as the focus of trade judgments, and trade protection will evolve into non-tariff barriers, ie, green barriers. If Chinese companies cannot cross the green trade barriers, no one will care about their products, and they will certainly suffer huge economic losses.

1.1 Factors of Environmental Laws and Regulations

Countries’ awareness of environmental protection is increasing, and environmental protection standards and measures have been formulated, such as the ISO14000 environmental system, which requires that the entire process from development to production use until final disposal meets the required technical standards, ie ecological and Environmental requirements, companies must invest in manpower and resources in order to meet these standards; the European Environmental Law stipulates the recycling quotas for automotive electronics, electrical appliances, and other products, and clearly stipulates the manufacturer’s liability for recycling; the EU establishes waste electronic and electrical products. Relevant legislation stipulates that by 2003 the electronic and electrical products that have completed the life cycle should be recycled, recycled or reused, and by 2008, clear regulations shall be established for the removal of specific hazardous substances in electronic and electrical products. It is recommended that the impact on its entire life cycle be minimized through the design of the product's production and use during the product development phase.

1.2 Green Technology Standard Issues

Developed countries have set up green tariffs and market access, and in the name of protecting the environment, they imposed import surcharges or restrictions on imported products that pollute the environment and affect the ecological environment and prohibit their import. And through the establishment of a mandatory technical standards certification system to restrict the import of foreign goods, the United States currently has 55 certification systems, Japan has 25 certification systems, and the European Union has also established a series of certification systems, many of them are very demanding. For example, the "Energy Conservation Law" new law implemented in Japan on April 1, 1999 stipulates that by 2010, cars imported into Japan will have a total mass of 1,000 kilograms of petrol sedans when they are on a two-person ride. At the time of year, it will save 17.7% [2] of the same type of vehicle in 1995, which limits the sales of other countries' cars to Japan.

1.3 Green Packaging System

At present, countries in the world stipulate different contents for the green packaging requirements of imported goods in accordance with their own national conditions. Imported goods are prohibited from adopting packaging materials that may cause damage to their own ecosystems; and packaging materials or packaging destruction materials are regulated in legal form. The packaging materials currently banned from use are: packaging materials made of polyvinyl chloride; foams containing CFC8; plastics that cannot be recycled or cannot be decomposed.

1.4 Green Tax

Including pollutant discharge tax, environmental service tax, pollution product tax, and ecological compensation tax. These are all for the relationship between trade and the environment, the environmental costs required by the manufacturer's mouth are included in the market price, and they appear in the form of environmental taxes.

2 Virtual Enterprise Green Manufacturing Content

Since all companies in a virtual enterprise are market-oriented economic entities, the consideration of green environmental protection factors will inevitably increase business costs in the short term. In China, most companies do not fully understand the significance of green manufacturing. They believe that green manufacturing in enterprises will cause troubles, and they will not realize the long-term economic and social benefits they bring. Even some companies that have obtained ISO 14000 do not realize the value of green manufacturing. Therefore, although it is certified, there is actually no change in product development and manufacturing, which makes environmental management certification only a form [3]. Specifically, the virtual enterprise environment issues should mainly consider the following issues.

2.1 Green Design

Green design is the design that achieves the product's green requirements. Its purpose is to overcome the deficiencies of the traditional design, so that the designed product has the characteristics of green products, and the overall impact of the product and its manufacturing process on the environment and resource consumption. Reduced to the minimum. It emphasizes systematic analysis and evaluation according to the life cycle perspective at the product development stage, eliminates the negative impact on the environment, and directly introduces 3R (reduce, reuse, recycling) to the product development stage. In the product development phase, a design for disassembling & recycling (design for disassembling & recycling) is required. It requires the detachability and recyclability as a target of structural design in the initial stage of product design, so that the product's connection structure can be easily disassembled and After the product is destroyed, it can be fully and effectively recycled, thereby reducing the production of destroyed materials and protecting the environment. At the same time, product design is the most important activity content of a virtual enterprise. Due to the problems involved in the sharing of resources and cooperation between different partners, the green manufacturing of a virtual enterprise must be fully considered:

a) It is necessary to make effective use of existing designs and manufacturing resources of cooperative enterprises and comprehensively consider the situation of green products, and maximize the use of existing cooperation design and manufacturing resources to reduce the production of parts design, drawing, process design, fixture design and manufacturing, etc. Ready to work. Shorten production preparation cycle

b) Since the virtual enterprise mainly adopts product design patterns in different places, the consideration of product greenness in the completion of product design must be completed in the remote communications. This involves the transmission of a large number of green parameters.

2.2 Material Selection for Green Manufacturing

Considering the use of new environmentally friendly materials, the new environmentally friendly materials not only have good performance and process performance, but also help save energy, save materials, and protect the environment. Choose materials with abundant raw materials, low cost and less pollution to replace expensive and contaminated materials; use non-toxic and harmless materials, and avoid materials containing lead, nickel, antimony, sulfur, fluorine, etc.; choose recyclable materials. Materials, which will help improve the product's recovery rate, save resources and reduce product destruction, thus protecting the ecological environment.

2.3 Green Manufacturing Process

The green manufacturing process is based on the reality of the green manufacturing system to improve the environmental friendliness of the process and its various aspects. Due to the large amount of information transmission among virtual enterprises, large amounts of information such as processing technology and modern product data are required to be shared and exchanged among the member companies of the virtual enterprise. CAD and CAM technologies are relatively mature, and CAPP is still at an early stage. Therefore, the process of data processing and delivery is still a big problem to be solved. In the virtual enterprise process information integration technology, the systematic and standardized process information acquisition has been the focus of the company. At present, there are units that conduct research on the CAD/CAPP integration technology based on the STEP standard, which mainly adopts object-oriented technology and database technology to automatically extract and identify part features from the three-dimensional CAD output files. Reference [5] took a combination of CAD extraction and manual replenishment to obtain complete information. A feature-based modeling method was used to establish a part process information model that could be used by members of the virtual enterprise and the CAX systems directly. transfer.

2.4 Green Packaging for Virtual Enterprises

Green packaging refers to moderate packaging that can be recycled, recycled, or degraded, and that does not pose a hazard to the human body or the environment throughout the product's life cycle. The problem to be solved by the green packaging of the virtual enterprise is to decompose the task of packaging to a certain member enterprise. After the entire enterprise sets the packaging standards, this member company is responsible for the specific implementation, including the selection of non-toxic and harmless packaging materials.

2.5 Recycling of old products

There is a period of time from the production of the virtual enterprise product to the disposal of the final product. Considering the temporary nature of the virtual enterprise, the virtual enterprise alliance may have been dissolved when the product is scrapped. At this time, the virtual enterprise needs to find a green processing agent to be responsible for the recovery and dismantling of waste products, which can be completed by the alliance owner and the partners. Taking into account the recycling of waste products is a highly professional job, it is best to find new professional partners. Waste products need to be dismantled first, and then the disassembled parts are divided into three categories: reusable parts, which are divided into directly repeatable parts and remanufactured parts that need to be remanufactured; recyclable parts, ie parts are scrapped but their materials Reusable; completely useless waste. The first two categories can be reused.

3 Green virtual enterprise overall architecture

Based on the environment-friendly analysis of the virtual enterprise, we established the overall architecture of the green virtual enterprise. As shown in FIG. 1, the system includes a system information infrastructure, a system cooperation platform, and a system application platform.

3.1 System Information Infrastructure

Since a virtual enterprise is a temporary network organization organized by a series of independent enterprises (including organizations, companies, social structures, and specific individuals) for a certain market opportunity, organizations have their own interests and corporate culture is different. . In this case, if the company's green thinking needs to be realized, it is necessary to strengthen the information exchange between the companies. Therefore, the communication of information in the green virtual enterprise is particularly important. Because of the large volume of information transmitted by virtual enterprises, large amounts of information, such as processing technology, are required to be shared and exchanged among member enterprises of virtual enterprises. The information sharing and integration of virtual enterprises is mainly based on the Internet, web, and CORBA. Various computer technologies. In the virtual enterprise process information integration technology, the systematic and standardized process information acquisition has been the focus of the company. Currently, the virtual enterprise information system is designed to ensure the smooth flow of information among various member companies. It includes enterprise directories, product catalogs, enterprise home pages, and knowledge base systems related to the operation of virtual enterprises.

3.2 Corporate Cooperation Platform

The enterprise cooperation platform is a key support system to support the creation and operation of virtual enterprises, including the virtual enterprise integration model building system, partner selection decision support system, virtual enterprise dynamic operation system, and virtual enterprise post-evaluation system. Through the corporate cooperation platform, a green virtual enterprise can be constructed, and the partners’ product green design capabilities, process green design capabilities, material green design capabilities, manufacturing process product greenness, and manufacturing process greenness can be evaluated. Less than the standard product redesign or production, to ensure the realization of corporate goals.

3.3 Application Platform

Refers to the application platform of member companies. The green component design, green process design and recyclable materials selection, and the use of green packaging for member companies to produce green products must all be completed on the application platform.

4 Conclusion

As a brand-new enterprise model, virtual enterprises are increasingly being promoted globally. The sustainable development of human beings has also made the issue of environmental protection in manufacturing a focus topic. All countries set up non-tariff green trade barriers on the premise of protecting the environment, and virtual companies must also conduct environmental research, mainly from green design, green technology, green packaging, and product recycling.