Amir Rashid

Today, manufacturing plays a key role in the global economy. At the same time, it also has a major environmental impact. Amir Rashid’s research into industrial processes and systems focuses on challenges presented by the need to develop industrial productivity and competitiveness without increasing negative impact. The goal is to reduce waste, carbon dioxide emissions and emissions of toxins in waste water. Simultaneously, the need for raw materials and water should be cut. This requires both process and system innovations.

At the process level, continuous improvement has to increase productivity and quality while reducing costs. This has to be partnered by falls in the consumption of energy, various metalworking fluids and raw materials. At the system level, it has to be ensured that improvements lower down have a life-cycle perspective. They must not shift problems to a higher level/dimension and degrade technical, economic or environmental performance.

The challenges include not only optimisation of existing systems and processes, but also the even more important development of their replacements. Additionally, all optimisation and new development must simultaneously accommodate technical, economic and environmental aspects. This makes the work difficult.

With the goal of reducing negative environmental impact and resource consumption while eliminating waste (via innovative forms of resource recycling and reuse), Amir Rashid is also conducting research into circular economies.