Flore Vallet

A comparative study of ideation mechanisms used in eco-innovation tools

Today the challenges of sustainable development require new products, services or uses to be developed within the framework of an eco-innovation process integrating environmental and societal approaches. Creating such offers can be sometimes based upon using eco-innovation tools that focus on the idea generation phase and ideation mechanisms that allow stakeholders to redefine problems and develop new eco-creative concepts. This paper is focused on the comparison of the ideation mechanisms during the idea generation phase of eco-innovative concepts, called the eco-ideation phase. For this, it describes a set of academic and industrial studies taking into account the different ideation mechanisms. The tests compare an adapted creativity tool with existing eco-innovation tools regarding their performances during eco-ideation phases. In a second step, additional case studies are performed with the adapted creativity tool for eco-innovation, to assess whether this performance is maintained in various contexts and with various participants (in knowledge and skills). The results showed that the use of appropriate ideation mechanisms ensures a constant rate of idea generation throughout the eco-ideation session and a wide variety of ideas generated.

Product life cycle management approach for integration of engineering design and life cycle engineering

Abstract Optimized lightweight manufacturing of parts is crucial for automotive and aeronautical industries in order to stay competitive and to reduce costs and fuel consumption. Hence, aluminum becomes an unquestionable material choice regarding these challenges. Nevertheless, using only virgin aluminum is not satisfactory because its extraction requires high use of energy and effort, and its manufacturing has high environmental impact. For these reasons, the use of recycled aluminum alloys is recommended considering their properties meet the expected technical and environmental added values. This requires complete reengineering of the classical life cycle of aluminum-based products and the collaboration practices in the global supply chain. The results from several interdependent disciplines all need to be taken into account for a global product/process optimization. Toward achieving this, a method for sustainability assessment integration into product life cycle management and a platform for life cycle simulation integrating environmental concerns are proposed in this paper. The platform may be used as a decision support system in the early product design phase by simulating the life cycle of a product (from material selection to production and recycling phases) and calculating its impact on the environment.