Abstract
The 4th Industrial Revolution incorporates the digital revolution in several fields, including artificial intelligence, autonomous vehicles, IoT, manufacturing, etc. Due to the advancement in difficult-to-cut materials, technology like abrasive waterjet machine (AWJM) in non-traditional manufacturing has been a benefit to the industry, and it can almost cut any material and is also considered environmentally friendly. The machine uses water, abrasives and electricity which are natural resources, and the purpose of the study is to optimize these resources for the AWJM which are relatively very complex considering the different varying parameters and material properties. The methodology is discussed with a case study of NC 3015S AWJ machine for studying sustainability using different method/tools like SCLM, ABCD and TSPDs approach which will illustrate the combined technical and sustainability assessment. An approach for working with abrasive waterjet machine on reducing cost and machining time which focusses on the four pillars of sustainability (social, economic, environmental and technology) has been presented. The discussions are demonstrated by cost/hour calculations, i.e., 45$/h for machining Ti6AL4V material, and how different machine and cutting parameters affect the total process economy was understood with abrasives contributed almost 65% of the total cost. Furthermore, a cloud-based knowledge sharing model is proposed by linking the sustainability with technology and how it can benefit the current SMEs to improve their productivity with abrasive waterjet machines.