Objective
Countries throughout the World have recently been quite active in considering the state of their environment. Currently, there are fairly many forums also within the European Community where environmental hazards of industrial operations are discussed. The European Union's Eco-Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS), for example, is a voluntary scheme designed to promote positive and proactive environmental management in the manufacturing industry. The main challenge for industrial companies to anticipate the environmental consequences of their operations is to collect, control, and interpret all the data embedded in the daily activities. In non-process industries, this is systematically been done only in a handful of companies. Moreover, the environmental hazards of the companies' processes have not usually been summarized. Only in rare cases has the reduction of environmental hazards seen as a way to minimize companies' fixed costs and possibly cut down variable running costs as well. To combine the environmental and economical factors of the operations of an industrial company, the decision makers need sufficiently intelligent and flexible computer-aided planning tools.
The objective of Enviro-MEND is to develop two model-based Best Practice Pilot decision-support applications for the above-described domain, i.e. environmental economics. The purpose is to prove that such a system is able to help companies to define and model their key processes (or core parts of them) and, based on the model, to collect important data on the environmental hazards of their operations. Methodologically, Enviro-MEND is a core part of the company's Total Quality Management System and integrates, therefore, to the company's quality data management system. The data on the processes and the environmental hazards are stored in Enviro-MEND in an object-oriented model. Consequently, the environmental hazards of the operations can be analyzed along various criteria (e.g. consumption of energy, pollution caused by transportation, reuse and recycling of production, used materials, packaging, packing material waste management, etc.), and reported in an understandable form. The other part of the model facilitates investigation of possible alternative actions to decrease the environmental hazards and to find the balance between the achievable improvements of the operations and financial factors. The model and attached application can help an industrial company to find an optimum balance between environmental consequences, environmental investments, and the operating costs.
Enviro-MEND delivers two best practice pilot applications - one in the domain of aircraft manufacturing and the other in the domain of automotive windshield manufacturing - for decision making in industrial economics, and an analysis how those applications may be used in routine environmental management of industrial companies. The industrial end users within the Enviro-MEND consortium intend to exploit the results of the project internally, and integrate the resulting environmental applications to their quality management systems. Additionally, the end user companies are committed to extend the initial coverage of the pilot applications to other operating units within the surrounding enterprises. The Enviro-MEND approach helps the companies to:
- improve the optimal usage of resources,
- improve the optimal usage of energy,
- find best possible compromise between environmental consequences and operating costs,
- systematically improve the state of the environment,
- manage reverse logistics of used products.
The software and consulting companies of the Enviro-MEND consortium are determined to commercialize the project results and to merge them to be part of their product and service portfolio.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- engineering and technology environmental engineering waste management waste treatment processes recycling
- natural sciences computer and information sciences software
- engineering and technology mechanical engineering vehicle engineering aerospace engineering aircraft
- natural sciences earth and related environmental sciences environmental sciences pollution
- social sciences economics and business economics production economics
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Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Topic(s)
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
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Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Coordinator
00101 Helsinki
Finland
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.