Marta Rossi

An approach to foster eco-design in 'traditional' companies without eco-knowledge

The adoption of an eco-design approach is a key challenge for the total quality environmental management (TQEM). Recently, several eco-design methodologies have been presented, but none can be easily integrated in the traditional design process of manufacturing companies. The research presented in this paper aims to define a methodology, called G.EN.ESI, to help designers (especially those ones without a specific know-how on eco-design), during the development of sustainable products. In order to aid designers in the assessment of the environmental and cost impacts of a product, also a set of software tools have been defined. Using such a platform, the designer is supported by a robust workbench to perform all the analyses required to evaluate the product eco-sustainability for each phase of the product lifecycle. This software platform is essential for companies which want to implement the G.EN.ESI methodology without upsetting their own consolidated modus operandi and the internal organisation.

Eco-Design Platform Within an Extended Enterprise: How to Implement It?

Nowadays, the environmental issue has become increasingly important and has taken a leading role in the product design process. The product sustainability pass through the use of specific software tools supporting the design phase. Their integration, to build up a platform, is a key aspect toward the implementation of an effective eco-design approach.Even if the approaches presented in literature to create an eco-design platform aim to integrate environmental aspects during the design process, a proper tools integration is not existing.To overcome these limitations, the paper presents an eco-design platform in which tools for the improvement of the product environmental characteristics are contained. The tools of the platform are used to calculate the environmental impact of a product for each product life cycle phase: manufacturing, transportation, use and End of Life. The platform is completed by a tool containing the eco-design guidelines, also specific for the industrial sector of the company, used to suggest the designers how to improve the product eco-sustainability.The end users of the platform consist of designers from the design office but also from every department relevant for the project, mainly R&D, production, purchasing department, and quality. In particular, the following roles have been considered as users: designer, product manager, environmental manager and buyer.Designers and company experts use the same workspace, made of different tools. They can detail all the product life cycle phases, quantify the product performances, modify its characteristics and verify the improvements obtained without change the traditional design process in a radical way.© 2014 ASME

Usability Demonstration of the G.EN.ESI Eco-Design Platform: The Cooker Hood Case Study

Due to the increasing pressure of legislations and market, the environmental sustainability is becoming a key competitive factor for companies. In specific markets, as the Northern Europe one, customers are very careful on the quality and sustainability of products, thus companies has to design and manufacture green goods. In this context, there is a strong need of effective design tools and platform which allows to configure products applying the life cycle paradigm and with the “environment on mind”. Currently in the market there are only few examples of products designed taking into account the eco-design concepts. In particular, for mechatronic or energy using products only the use phase is usually considered and all the re-design strategies aim to reduce the energy consumption. This is essentially due to the fact that there is a lack of tools and design platforms, which are easy to use and well integrated with the traditional design tools and with the design processes of companies.This paper wants to demonstrate the usefulness of a set of interoperable eco-design tools, the G.EN.ESI platform, in supporting the re-design of a mechatronic product. The proposed case study, realized in collaboration with an Italian leading company in the sector of household appliances, focuses on the improvement of a domestic cooker hood with the final objective to obtain a more sustainable product. The in-depth experimentation, for the duration of more than 3 months, involved different stakeholders within the company (designers, environmental expert, etc.), with the aim to validate the G.EN.ESI platform tools in different phases of the re-design process. The case study showed that the use of the platform has supported the company in the identification of the environmental hot-spots and during the product re-design phase, considering the whole life cycle. The re-engineered cooker hood exhibits relevant improvements in the most important environmental and economic indicators (environmental impact, energy efficiency, disassemblability, recyclability, etc.). Also a detailed analysis of the platform usability has been performed in order to measure if the tools completely fulfil the expectations of the final users. Finally, the level of integration within the company processes has been evaluated with a dedicated questionnaire. The results of these last analyses showed that the G.EN.ESI platform is appropriate to support a company to improve the sustainability of their products without the needs to heavily alter the traditional design process.Copyright

A Case-Based Reasoning Approach to Support the Application of the Eco-Design Guidelines

The product eco-sustainability is recognized as a key factor for competitive products and recently, lots of international directives (guidelines) have been issued. However, in literature does not exist research on the practical application of the guidelines during the design phase. The paper aims to define a new approach to support the product design, applying the most common eco-design guidelines integrated with the designers past experiences. This approach consists in a Case- Based Reasoning tool containing a repository of eco-design guidelines and knowledge relative to the past designers experience. The approach has been tested during the re-design process of a cooker hood.