is an open access repository that collects the work of Arts et Métiers ParisTech researchers and makes it freely available over the web where possible. In a very uncertain and competitive economy, companies have to cope with external constraints such as environmental and social issues, to gain competitive advantage. Over the last thirty years, numerous initiatives have appeared to deal with socio-environmental issues. However, contexts are complex and dynamics. Many authors therefore point out the need to establish a systemic perspective in order to improve the integration of sustainable issues into all company activities: from strategic decision-making to the end of the project. In addition, companies need to reinforce the relationship between general corporate development and eco-design activities. Based on literature review, this paper assumes that the integration of sustainability can be improved by developing a coherent and system approach between strategic, tactical and operational levels. The authors have chosen to demonstrate this assumption by targeting the environmental aspect of sustainability as a first step of their overall research. In this view, this paper proposes a navigation system composed of three modules: strategic, tactical and operational. This navigation system provides some pragmatic roadmaps for integrating environment into the company. Each module is linked to the others by the use of appropriate metrics. Bottom-up and top-down or middle-to-sides strategies are fully supported.To test this proposal, the navigation system is experimented retrospectively into an industrial process from the textile industry. The comparison between the initial situation and the experimental results allows authors to highlights potential environmental improvements. Some recommendations are made to challenges companies to use this navigation system, which argues in favor of environmental improvements.

To cite this version:Maud Rio, Tatiana Reyes, Lionel Roucoules. Toward proactive (eco)design process: modeling information transformations among designers activities. Journal of Cleaner Production, Elsevier, 2012, 39 (January 2013 The growing number of tools and methods for environmental impact analysis shows the variety of contexts covered by ecodesign. As ecodesign tools are evolving rapidly and manipulating different data, environmental engineers are facing some difficulties to share data efficiently with the current product designers tools. To support this data exchange among software, the capacity of tools to interoperate has been widely improved over the last ten years by software integrations. However, this paper argues that the lack of dynamism and flexibility of those solutions cannot fully face the challenge of designing ecoeffective products. Therefore, this paper proposes a three-step method to build dynamic information exchanges between environmental engineers and product designers activities involved along the design process. This proposal can be adapted to the various ecodesign contexts encountered during the design process. It also gives the capacity to the environmental engineer to use any available information produced by other designers and to give them back an adapted answer to reiterate their choices. In this paper, the proposal has been tested on an industrial case study. The results are used to discuss the benefits of developing such a method in the industry to build a constant proactivity along the design process between the environmental engineer and product designers.