Opinion

One of the major problems faced by businesses in the 1990s is how to produce environmentally friendly products and stay profitable. A pioneering consortium at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is using AI, combined with operations research, environmental science, public policy, and other disciplines, to build tools for green engineering. Green engineering is an approach to product development that balances environmental compatibility against economic profitability. It looks at the entire life cycle of the product, from design to disposal, and seeks to extend this life cycle through remanufacturing, reusing, and recycling products and components. Today, industrial solutions to environmental problems focus largely on recycling, figuring out how to dispose of products at the end of their useful lives.