Integrated eco-design decision-making for sustainable product development

Abstract

This paper presents an integrated eco-design decision-making (IEDM) methodology that is formed using three stages: life cycle assessment, an eco-design process (Eco-Process) model and an enhanced eco-design quality function deployment process. All product sustainability considerations are conducted within a special eco-design house of quality. This brings together the analysis of factors relating to manufacturing processes, product usage and end-of-life strategy. The concentration of environmental considerations in one place insures that product sustainability is central to any design development and that the implications of change are fully identified and justified. The IEDM methodology utilises of a set of Eco-Process parameters and their associated relationships to allow users with complementary knowledge to enter and access information in a timely and controlled manner. They are then able to contribute their expertise to support decisions with the aim of providing more sustainable products. An application of the approach is presented in the context of a case study considering the redesign of a single-use medical forceps. The materials and production methods used are investigated with a view to quantifying their environmental impact. The resulting IEDM methodology can be seen to be widely and easily applicable.

Integrating Sustainability in Product Requirements

“…Whether sustainability is included in the product requirements can however be linked to the sustainability commitment on strategic and tactical levels (Schulte and Hallstedt, 2017). There are furthermore two main approaches to manage integration of sustainability criteria into the product requirements; i) as separate requirements such as complying with certain legislations and regulations, or ii) by relating sustainability criteria to traditional design requirements, e.g., relating "reduce material usage" to "low product weight" in a QFD (Masui et al, 2003;Romli et al, 2015;Popoff and Millet, 2017). The latter was most common within the literature review results, and QFD came out as the most frequently used tool.…”

“…The common characteristic for these approaches is that they semantically correlate sustainability (or rather environmental) aspects into functional requirements. In QFD, for instance, an eco-design strategy such as 'reduce material use' can be translated into the functional requirement of 'low product weight' (Romli et al, 2015;Alemam and Li, 2016;Salari and Bhuiyan, 2016). Similarly, AD and FA allow designers to construct design parameters from functional requirements, which can be oriented towards sustainability and evaluated in matrices (Morrison et al, 2013;Beng and Omar, 2014;Lacasa et al, 2015;Lacasa et al, 2016).…”

“…A similar approach is used in Vinodh et al (2014), and in Salari and Bhuiyan (2016) where the Life Cycle Design Strategies are used to formulate customer requirements in a Green QFD. Romli et al (2015) and Alemam and Li (2016) use eco-design strategies to formulate environmental criteria, to which ad hoc social considerations, such as human health and working conditions, are added. Recently, Popoff and Millet (2017) proposed the EcoCSP-QFD in which environmental performance, i.e., climate change, human health, ecosystem quality and resources, and costs are used to conduct the QFD.…”

A systematic review of environmentally conscious product design

“…Then, LCA, QFDE (quality functional deployment for environment) or environmentally conscious QFD (ECQFD), and TRIZ (theory of inventive problem solving) were combined in [15] and [16] to improve product eco-innovation for re-use and recycling. Also, the LCA, an eco-design process model, and an enhanced eco-QFD were applied to make eco-design decision making [17]. Further, Rathod [18] presented a case of fuzzy ECQFD to aid product design team in considering eco-concerns.…”

The Development of a Cleaner Production Model and Applied Management Solutions for the Pharmaceutical Industry

“…Hence, environmental protection was one of the most important factors in the creation and activation of development, sustainability, success and excellence strategies in business firms [3]. Nowadays, customers and stakeholders mainly encourage or force business firms to comply with environmental laws and to implement sustainable environmental management systems and green business [4]. Environmental sustainability is based on the concepts such as cleaner production, green production, green productivity, green and sustainable design, and takes a preventive approach with emphasis on productivity [5].…”