A Product Model to Capture and Reuse Ecodesign Knowledge

2005 4th International Symposium on Environmentally Conscious Design and Inverse Manufacturing, 2005

optimal criteria to integrate them within a proper procedure for evaluating and improving environmental The achievement of the optimum agreement between impacts related to the entire product life cycle. This technical aspects and characteristics, and environmental approach was developed throughout its application to an aspects has become very hard task for designers: it is industrial case: the redesign of an electric vehicle was clear that better results can be achieved by planning of performed with the aim of improving the environmental numerous aspects concerning the whole life cycle of performances of such a product particularly during its use products from the initial stages oftheir development.

International Journal of Sustainable Design

This paper shows how to develop eco-products using the Ecodesign approach. Three different product case studies show how to proceed in developing environmentally improved products. These case studies have been carried out in collaboration with industry and the identified product improvements have been realised in commercial products, which are now available on the market. The first case study is an alpine ski, the second is office equipment (Digital Pocket Memo (DPM)) and the third is a new Golf Swing Analyser. Obtaining green product concepts using the ECODESIGN Toolbox with and without having a reference product to start with are presented.

2014

Based on examples from research and innovation within nanotechnology, housing, bioenergy, and clothing the complexity of environmental innovation is discussed. A model for a more holistic approach to environmental innovation, which can be used both as part of innovation processes and for analyses of previous innovation processes, is developed. The approach is based on: 1) A scenario perspective on environmental aspects and impacts which implies a focus on the future roles of a product, its users and the surrounding society as imagined by the designers in their considerations about the problems addressed by the product and the solution it is offering. 2) A system's perspective which implies a focus on the system, which a product is part of, including the need for supporting infrastructures like stakeholder training, waste management etc. 3) A lifecycle perspective to environmental aspects and impacts in order not only to capture environmental aspects from cradle to grave, e.g. related to material extraction and refining, chemical exposure during manufacturing, use and waste handling. 4) A governance perspective on management of environmental aspects and impacts, both in relation to the legitimacy of the environmental problems addressed and the solutions 'offered' by the product.

Volume 3: 30th Computers and Information in Engineering Conference, Parts A and B, 2010

With the increasing environmental sophistication of consumers, there is a need to consider environmental factors and sustainability in the design process. This paper proposes a design methodology intended for software implementation called eAD+ to address the following four issues: 1) there are inherent couplings between eco-factors and product design parameters, 2) eco-factors are seldom structured for ready use within all phases of the design process, 3) there is a need for a formal feedback mechanism from the results of eco-analysis to the design process, and 4) it can be difficult to identify which design choice causes the most egregious environmental issue or functional coupling. eAD+ is based primarily on the Axiomatic Design (AD) methodology and addresses these issues as follows. First, AD directly identifies couplings between the functional requirements (FRs) in a design so that efforts, such as TRIZ, can be applied to address them. Second, as common eco-factors do not provi...

Volume 2A: 33rd Computers and Information in Engineering Conference, 2013

The design of more sustainable products can be best accomplished in a tradeoff-based design process that methodically handles conflicting objectives. Such conflicts are often seen between, environmental impact, cost, and product performance. To support such a process, we propose the development of an environment where sustainability considerations are explicitly introduced early into the design process. This explicitness is provided by integrating the requirements information of sustainability standards and regulations directly into the design process. The emergence of the semantic web provides an interoperable environment in which the context and meaning of knowledge about the relationships among various domains can be shared. This work presents an ontological framework designed to represent both the objectives that pertain to sustainable design and the applicable sustainability standards and regulations. This integrated approach not only can ease the adoption of the standards and regulations during a design process but can also influence a design toward sustainability considerations. The usefulness of this model integration is demonstrated by an illustrative brake disk rotor and pads case study. The results show that both the standards and criteria may be considered at early design stages by using this methodology. Furthermore, it can be used to capture, reveal, and propagate the design intent transparently to all design participants.

The Journal of Sustainable Product Design, 2002

It will be shown that a modelling approach for the conceptual design of products that considers the environmental aspects of all phases of the product's life-cycle is still needed. Next, a taxonomy of the various categories of environmental aspects is developed and the options for incorporating these into the planning of the early phases of product development are highlighted. In the following article, a new modelling approach is introduced to fill the gap and its usefulness is shown in a case-study of a pencil-sharpener. For the task of implementing the disposal phase's costs in the mathematical model two options are compared that differ in the level of detail on the one hand and in the amount of work needed for the analysis on the other hand. The case-study's results show that even in the early stages of product development, it is possible to include the consideration of the environmental impact into the decision process and that the resulting conceptual design exhibits these environmental considerations in the choice of the configuration elements activated.

Proceedings First International Symposium on Environmentally Conscious Design and Inverse Manufacturing, 1999

Industry was carried out in order to understand the way in which industry in the UK, Central Europe and the USA are carrying out Ecodesign. The survey also investigated the successes and failures companies had experienced and the lessons they had learnt along the way. From this survey we identified a number of success factors that enabled companies to successfully integrate environmental decisions into their product development process which is very unusual in that ecodesign is significantly different for the pre-and post-specification stages of the design process. This paper explains the findings related to the first phase being the very early stages of the product development process prior to the specification being finalised. A second paper, considers the findings from the later phases of the product development process.

Key Engineering Materials, 2014

This paper proposes a conceptual model to support sustainable product design. The approach develops an integrated multimodal decision making model which is to be introduced early in the design process, as the basis for the integration of the life cycle assessment into an Eco-design model. The model, which is based upon an adapted "House of Quality" analysis, supports designers when assessing the environmental impact of the product design. The resulting Eco-design model evaluates the sustainability of the designed product using criteria that consider the impact of manufacturing process, product usage and end-of-life (EoL) disposal strategy. This approach is demonstrated using a case study that considers the design of a set of crocodile medical forceps, in which the redesign of a new forceps is undertaken by considering all the parameters in the Ecodesign model.

2015

Industrial goods are responsible for a substantial part of the environmental impacts of human societies (UN DESA, 1992). Their production, distribution, use and disposal need a lot of resources and generate emissions and waste to all the environmental areas: water, air, soil, that disrupts the equilibrium of ecosystems. Wenzel et al. (2000) evaluate that 80 % of the environmental impacts of the

2013

Some product categories, like electro-domestics, generate most of their environmental impact during use phase. Yet, the integration of this product life-cycle stage has been a challenge for ecodesign. Scenario is a formalism that has been used for a long time for integration of the use phase characteristics, in term of actors, actions, and context, into product development process. This paper presents an adaptation of the scenario formalism that can be used for ecodesign. Our proposal for implementing scenario into the ecodesign process is based on the separation of the use phase into seven “moments” that will cover product lifecycle from installation (ending of the distribution phase) to decommissioning (beginning of end of life phase). The scenario will be used first to evaluate the environmental impacts. Based on this evaluation of the use phase moments, examples of the most efficient ecodesign strategies are presented. A case study on refrigerator used in Brazil was conducted to...