Towards ensuring sustainable production - experimental study of the assembly process in the automotive industry.

Enhancing sustainable production (SP) requires monitoring of industrial activities, particularly in relation to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In the automotive industry, implementing actions to enhance SP in line with the SDGs remains a key challenge. This study fills a research gap and develops a tool leveraging Industry 4.0 technologies for monitoring and reporting selected indicators characterizing SP, while maintaining high efficiency in core manufacturing operations. Experimental work is conducted based on the surface-mount assembly process for the production of electronic components used in a measuring device in the automotive industry. In the analysed case study the research results demonstrate the main relationships between assembly line efficiency and selected SP factor, namely energy consumption. Next, it proposes AI-based model for predicting energy consumption in assembly process towards ensuring SP. The results are generic for automotive industry due to a novel approach to integrate assembly efficiency parameters and SP indicators using IoT and ERP.