Integrating Environmental Aspects in Eco-Design through a Product Information Model

Abstract

Taking environmental factors into consideration is the primary demand and feature of eco-design. But the environmental factors are often numerous, trivial and related to the entire design phases, which make eco-design difficult to carry out. In order to address this problem, Product Information Model for Eco-design (PIMfE) based on the NIST CPM2 was proposed to provide an organizer and a standard representation for eco-design information. By extending the CPM2, environmental aspects, such as environmental norms, regulations, standards, material selection, disassembly, recycling and environmental impact evaluation, were integrated into product information model. Then the key activities of eco-design namely requirement analysis, detailed design and environmental evaluation could be supported by PIMfE. An example of keypad microphone is used to illustrate the suggested product information model and verify its validity.