SYSTEMS ENGINEERING METHODS AND
ENVIRONMENTAL LIFE CYCLE PERFORMANCE
WITHIN SHIP INDUSTRY
ANNIK MAGERHOLM FET
DOKTOR INGENIØR AVHANDLING 1997
INSTITUTT FOR TERMISK ENERGI OG VANNKRAFT
NORGES TEKNISK NATURVITENSKAPELIGE
UNIVERSITET
TRONDHEIM
PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The incentive to start this research project was the challenges for environmental improvements opportunities in the ship industry. My data are collected from several projects carried out in this field in the region Møre in Norway. These data constitute the footing for the present study, and the different scenarios discussed, are partly tested in the industry. Through these projects close cooperation has developed between the ship industry, research centers and educational institutions, both locally, nationally and internationally.
The Systems Engineering principles and methods are adopted due to the complex array of subjects in the ship industry and when dealing with environmental issues. The present writer has shown that the method is appropriate for analyses and evaluations of environmental-related problems discussed in this work.
The studies were carried out in the period 1993 - 1996 at Aalesund College and Møre Research. The friendship and encouragement from my colleagues is greatly appreciated. I wish to express my sincere gratitude to all who have contribute to make this thesis possible. In particular to:
Professor Odd Andreas Asbjørnsen, my supervisor at the Department of Thermal Energy and Hydropower, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, NTNU, for introducing me to the exciting field of Systems Engineering.
Professor Helge Brattebø, co-supervisor at the Center for Environment and Development, the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, NTNU, for guiding me through the different methods of environmental performance evaluation.
Their kind support, inspiring guidance and advice through the various stages of this thesis have been of great value to me.
A number of people have in many ways helped and supported me through the time-consuming work of completing the present thesis. However, some of them have always been «stand-by». I specially want to express my gratitudes to the following:
Alfred Angelfoss, research coordinator and lecturer, Ålesund College, for critical reviews of my manuscripts, for his helpful advice, for stimulating discussions, and for all his support.
Knut Langseth, professor of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Ålesund College, for his kindly advice and recommendations of correct wordings relative to the ship industry.
Colleagues and friends at Ålesund College and at Møre Research for their support and their skilful help through the projects carried out in industry, especially to Wenche Ravlo who was an important contributor to the work in the very beginning, to Tanja Fiskaa, Helen Stavseng, Jan Terje Johannesen, Jan Emblemsvåg, Jon Ivar Håvold and others through inspiring discussions and technical support. Lecturer Rannveig Siem is thanked for revising the manuscript.
The leadership and employees at Fiskerstrand Verft AS, Brattvåg Skipsverft AS, Ulstein Verft AS, Liaaen Verft AS, Kværner Kleven AS, Kværner Florø AS, Søviknes Verft AS and Farstad Shipping AS for providing sufficient data and financial support.
I will also express my gratitude to my husband Monrad, my children Kristian, Ragni and Andreas, family and friends for their help and patience.
The work has also gained from the experiences of the Technical University in Delft in the Netherlands, the Wuppertal Institute in Germany, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology in US, and from the International Standardization Organization’s development of environmental standards.
The Norwegian State Pollution Control, Kommunal and Arbeidsdepartementet, Ålesund College and Møre Research are warmly thanked for their financial support.
Ålesund, January 1997.
SUMMARY
The present work studies the application of the Systems Engineering methodology in order to evaluate and improve environmental life cycle performances in the ship industry. This industry is used to demonstrate the principles, and the results are based on examples from projects carried out in this industry. The principles and methodologies are appropriate for other kind of industry as well. Through the work environmental performance indicators (EPIs) are developed, and these are used in the analysis, evaluation and optimization of environmental performance improvements in a life cycle perspective.
The examples used in this work are mainly concentrated on the interactions between technology and environmental issues in the concept of sustainability. In the thesis several methodologies for environmental accounting and environmental life cycle performance improvements are discussed. As a result of this work it is also the intention that the use of the Systems Engineering and the life cycle approach towards environmental performance improvements, should be an inspiration for other kinds of industrial systems.
Part I: Environmental performance, introduction and methods.
There is a need for placing environmental performance in a context where firms can see how to contribute to a sustainable development in a long term perspective with a chance at economic benefits also in a short term perspective. For this purpose the Systems Engineering method is applied and environmental performance indicators are used.
Potential areas for improvements can be identified by environmental management tools, such as Cleaner Production (CP), Environmental Accounting (EAc), Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), Life Cycle Screening (LCS), Life Cycle Costing (LCC), Environmental Auditing (EA) Environmental Performance Evaluation (EPE) and Environmental Management Systems (EMS). These tools are placed in a common framework where the scope of temporal and environmental concerns are discussed. Environmental performance is to be understood as the results that an organization has achieved related to the environment through all its activities. An important issue in the discussion is the concept Industrial Ecology, the broad umbrella for organizing production and consumption systems in ways that resemble natural ecosystems.
Part II: The Systems Engineering method.
Systems Engineering is a management tool to assist and support policy making, planning, decision making, and associated resource allocation or action deployment. Generally both top-down and bottom-up approaches are needed and used in Systems Engineering. The top-top-down approach is primarily concerned with long-term issues while the bottom-up approach is concerned with making parts of the system more efficient and effective. Systems Engineering is also the process of bringing a system into being. Every system has a position in a total system structure, and is made up of elements which interact with each other and with the environment. Material and energy, as well as economy, information and humans are interchanged. Such interchanges impact the environment, and the effects are understood by natural science. When
system performances are analyzed, the environmental impacts must always be taken into consideration.
A life cycle orientation is also required. The System Life Cycle is one of the backbones of Systems Engineering. The Systems Engineering process is described through a multi step methodology; identification of needs, definition and specification of performance requirements, analysis, evaluating and optimization, designing, testing and reporting.
Part III: Application of the Systems Engineering principles.
The Systems Engineering principles as well as other analytical tools, are demonstrated by examples from the ship industry. This part starts by defining the System Life Cycle of a ship. After a description of the most important environmental issues, the needs for environmental performance improvements are identified. The ship is then divided into convenient parts, and all requirements, both functional, operational, and physical, are defined. The functional unit is calculated and every measurement of the environmental performance and improvement are related to this. The collected data form the baseline when environmental performance indicators (EPIs) are selected. Most of the examples are verified through real measures in the industry. However, some results are based on assumed values due to time and budget limitations, likewise has getting data from the scrapping phase been a limiting factor. The requirements to environmental performance are related to the North Sea area and land areas close to this. Appropriate EPIs are developed for the two system elements taken under study, namely the «External Material Protection» and the «Diesel Engine for Propulsion». Analysis and optimization techniques are demonstrated by trade-offs for the scenarios:
• Scenario «Sandblasting».
• Scenario «Exhaust emissions».
• Scenario «Antifouling, growing and fuel consumption».
In the last steps in the Systems Engineering process; design, verification and testing, the set of EPIs as appropriate ship design parameters are discussed. Finally, the process of selecting EPIs, the bottom up and the top down approach, and the use of EPIs in reporting and evaluation in accordance to the ISO 14000-standards are discussed.
Part IV: Summary and conclusions.
Evaluation of environmental performance in the ship industry has proved to be a challenging task. The present work is mainly dealing with the construction phase and the operation phase in the ship’s life cycle. The work concludes that the Systems Engineering method is an appropriate methodology for environmental performance and improvement analyses. However, it assumes that environment as an important issue, is built into the system definition. The system definition has therefore been extended to also yield the systems’ interactions with the environment. System boundaries and the functional unit must be well defined, and tools for weighting and assessing environmental impacts, e.g. the LCA-tools, must be adopted when necessary.
The results have shown that EPIs as evaluation variables, are appropriate tools for the optimizing process in Systems Engineering. By means of an objective function as a weighted sum of EPI-measures, a value of a system’s environmental performance is given. This value indicates the
«goodness» or «badness» of its environmental performance. The work also suggests that the Systems Engineering methodology in combination with other tools, should be an appropriate method for Industrial Ecology. A final conclusion is that there is a need for a comprehensive tool for analyzing environmental performance both for ship systems as well as for other industrial systems. The Systems Engineering has proved to be an appropriate tool for this purpose. However, more work regarding data collection and development of the methodology as an analytical tool, have to be done before the ship system’s environmental performance is sufficiently evaluated in a life cycle perpective.
