Alejandro C. Ramírez-Reivich

A Case Study in “Total Beauty” Design: An Experience Through Sustainable Product Design

Recent research on ‘engineering design’ is expanding to consider methods, tools and frameworks aimed at assisting designers in the process of developing sustainable products. Some of these new approaches highlight the importance and advantages of applying biology, chemistry and human-environment health, concepts and principles at the design stage of the product development process. The successful application of these approaches also requires overcoming a number of challenges. Two particular issues currently being investigated are: 1) the contradictory and sometimes misleading use of concepts regarding what a sustainable product is; and 2) the lack of sustainable parameters to evaluate how sustainable a product is. This paper presents a synthesis of the Total-Beauty theoretical framework, based on the study reported in a previous paper. Then, a process to redesign products using BioThinking, is proposed followed by its application in the redesign of a product. The process is original because it shows how the core concepts are considered in all the steps of a design process and not just in the specification and evaluation steps. The redesign is used as a case study to show its utility. The paper includes the synthesis of evaluation parameters based on BioThinking to both assess the sustainability of products, and compare the redesigned product against the original design. In the end of the paper, a discussion of the design process and the results of the case study will be presented.Copyright

Energy consumption analysis of ABS plastic parts injected in a hybrid injection moulding machine

ABSTRACT The energy analysis of injection moulding processes is influenced by complex interactions amongst the moulded part, its material, the injection machine, the process parameters and the environmental conditions. The availability of energy usage analyses that comprehend information on specific materials and machine kind is limited. This paper reports a study that estimates and analyses the power usage profile (PUP), the specific energy consumption (SEC), and the energy distribution at an operation level of two different injected parts made of acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene and produced in a hybrid injection moulding machine. The methodology followed by the authors incorporates an experiment carried out in an industrial facility. A large sample size, and data-acquisition and data post-processing processes to obtain an accurate PUP and SEC are used. A breakdown of the energy consumed by the injection moulding process of the parts studied at an operation level using Sankey diagrams is discussed. The study results are used to identify strategies to reduce the energy consumed by the processes. The methodology employed, and the strategies reported could be used with other plastic parts regardless of the material and machine used. The results reported are new experimental data useful input for theoretical models.

Sustainability Assessment of Products: A Comparative Study of Sustainability Assessment Tools

The number of existing tools, principles and approaches to assess sustainability in products is growing to meet industry and society needs. For those related to design and development in universities, research institutes and companies it is a fundamental issue to recognize features and details of the sustainability assessment tools in order to select the one that best fits their particular needs. This paper describes the outcomes of a product sustainability assessment carried out at Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, UNAM. The approach followed by the authors in this assessment was aimed at comparing the results provided by a set of software tools and a previous sustainability integrated-criteria tool developed by the research group.The main contribution of this paper is the insight on the software tools used and on the results of the assessment since the design point of view. The results of the assessment included metrics such as: carbon footprint, energy use, end of life potential, toxicity, eco-toxicity, human toxicity, recyclability, and others. In the first part of the paper, an introduction of the criteria and the software based tools for sustainability assessment used by the authors is presented. Then a justification of the tools used and an explanation on how the comparison was achieved are given. The product used as a case study and the results of its sustainability assessment are presented. The case study part is a home appliance subsystem. In the end of the paper conclusions, insights and further work are given.Copyright

Teaching Sustainable Design Within a Product Innovation Process in Mexico: Linking Two One-Semester Design Courses

This paper documents the process, the outcomes and the lessons learned from two design courses aimed at incorporating environmental, economic and social concerns during the product development process. These courses are co-taught by professors of the Engineering and the Industrial Design Schools of the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM). Each course lasts one academic semester and includes engineering graduate and undergraduate students from industrial design and engineering.The two courses are “New Product Development” (NPD) and “Design for Sustainability” (DS). The NPD course runs in collaboration with the University of California at Berkeley (UCB) and it has been taught at UNAM since 2008. The course fosters the development of product concepts that address particular user needs related to sustainability issues and enhance user’s experience and innovation.The DS course is aimed at introducing students to the most representative approaches, methodologies and tools related to sustainability. DS takes the NPD process as a background, i.e. takes the NPD product concept produced by students and evaluates its environmental impact, and its technical and economic feasibility. Some issues on entrepreneurship and social responsibility are also covered.For both courses design projects are paramount. Some of the projects carried out by the students during the courses are proposed by students themselves and some others are put forward by companies.The first part of this paper includes some background information on representative sustainability courses reported in the literature. Then the complete process model comprised by the NPD and DS courses is presented. Some details of the actual courses contents and lecture activities are also described. Representative projects developed within the courses, one of which is now a startup company, are presented. Finally, insights and lessons learned are discussed.Copyright

International and Multidisciplinary Experiences in Engineering Courses at UNAM

A team of faculty members from the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM) has coordinated multidisciplinary courses in collaboration with universities from other countries. The team, who is composed by faculty from the School of Engineering and the School of Architecture, coordinates with pairs of Stanford University, the University of California at Berkeley, and the Technical University of Munich; to teach three particular design courses.All three courses are related to product innovation but they have different emphasis depending on the collaborating partner. The focal points of each of the three courses are: (1) innovation, (2) user centered design and sustainability and (3) transport in megacities of the future.Engineering and industrial design students are involved in the courses. They are organized in teams that include participants from the two collaborating universities. During the courses teams carry out projects working mostly at a distance; they use different means of communication and information sharing and also pay reciprocal visits between the universities involved in the collaboration.This paper describes each of the three courses highlighting their particular characteristics. The outcomes and results of the courses and specific projects are commented. In the end of the paper lessons learned are discussed and final remarks are presented.Copyright

UNAM’s University-Industry PhD Engineering Program

This article presents UNAM’s University-Industry PhD Engineering Program that has been implemented over the last six years to help in the training of young researchers. The program expands along 8 semesters and is strengthened by the Mexican Science and Techology’s (CONACYT’s) funding schemes. Specifically, CONACYT’s new “Funds for Innovation Scheme”, which is intended for corporations that wish to design and develop new products, processes or services. The paper reports on the activities typically carried out by a research student (RS) in each of the 8 semesters and presents the results obtained in the PhD research work titled “Design and Development of a PVC Ampoule Filler-Sealer Machine System”.© 2010 ASME