scholarly journals Challenges of Applying Simplified LCA Tools in Sustainable Design Pedagogy

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 2406
Author(s):  
Suphichaya Suppipat ◽  
Kulthida Teachavorasinskun ◽  
Allen H. Hu
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Impact ◽  
Product Design ◽  
Energy Use ◽  
Sustainable Design ◽  
The Sustainable Development ◽  
Simplified Lca ◽  
Early Stages ◽  
Sustainable Innovation ◽  
Study Product ◽  
Challenges And Opportunities

The growing recognition of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) has been integrated globally into product design and business activities. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is considered a useful tool for designers to apply in the early stages of product design to mitigate the environmental impact. The study aims to identify the challenges of applying simplified LCA tools to improve the eco-efficiency of products and achieve a higher level of sustainable innovation. The study was conducted in a sustainable design course at Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, for four consecutive years. All challenges and opportunities by using ECO-it, Eco-indicators, and the Materials, Energy use, and Toxic emissions (MET) matrix to assess the environmental impact in each phase of 11 home appliances are presented and discussed. Results show the positive potential of applying the tools to achieve function innovation in design for sustainable innovation. The needs for guided instruction, the availability of the database, the complexity of a study product, and the overlooking of social dimensions are four major challenges in applying the tools in the early stages of product redesign. Further study in testing the tools and developing a database in collaboration with industries should be conducted to compare and validate the results.

Quantifying the Impact of Sustainable Product Design Decisions in the Early Design Phase Through Machine Learning

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Addison Wisthoff ◽  
Vincenzo Ferrero ◽  
Tony Huynh ◽  
Bryony DuPont
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Impact ◽  
Product Design ◽  
Sustainable Design ◽  
Design Phase ◽  
Product Attributes ◽  
Design Decisions ◽  
Early Design ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Early Design Phase

As more companies and researchers become interested in understanding the relationship between product design decisions and eventual environmental impact, proposed methods have explored meeting this demand. However, there are currently limited methods available for use in the early design phase to help quantify the environmental impact of making design decisions. Current methods, primarily vetted Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methods, require the designer to wait until later in the design phase, when a product’s design is more defined; alternatively, designers are resigned to relying on prior sustainable design experience and empirical knowledge. There is a clear need to develop methods that quantitatively inform designers of the environmental impact of design decisions during the early design phase (particularly during concept generation), as this allows for reexamination of decisions before they become costly or time-intensive to change. The current work builds on previous research involving the development of a search tree of sustainable design knowledge, which, applied during the early design phase, helps designers hone in on the impact of product design decisions. To assist in quantifying the impact of these design decisions, the current work explores the development of a weighting system associated with each potential design decision. The work presented in this paper aims to quantify the general environmental impact potential design decisions have on a consumer product, by using a multi-layer perceptron neural network with back propagation training — a method of machine learning — to relate the life-cycle assessment impact of 37 case study products to product attributes. By defining the relationship between LCA data and product attributes, designers in the early design phase will be more informed of which product attributes have the largest environmental impact, such that the designer can redesign the product to have reduce this impact.

A Probabilistic Approach for Estimating the Environmental Impact of Novel Product Concepts

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vincenzo Ferrero ◽  
Chris Hoyle ◽  
Bryony DuPont
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Impact ◽  
Product Design ◽  
Environmental Sustainability ◽  
Design Research ◽  
Sustainable Design ◽  
Probabilistic Approach ◽  
Consumer Products ◽  
Component Level ◽  
Innovative Products ◽  
Product Concepts

Abstract Global concerns about climate change and resource management have escalated the need for sustainable consumer products. In light of this, sustainable design methodologies that supplement the product design process are needed. Current research focuses on developing sustainable design curricula, adapting classical design methods to accommodate environmental sustainability, and sustainability tools that are applicable during the early design phase. However, concurrent work suggests that sustainability-marketed and innovative products still lack a reduction of environmental impact compared to conventional products. Life cycle assessment (LCA) has proven to be an exceptional tool used to assess the environmental impact of a realized product. However, LCA is a reactive tool that does not proactively reduce the environmental impact of novel product concepts. Here we develop a novel methodology, the PeeP method, using historical product LCA data with kernel density estimation to provide an estimated environmental impact range for a given product design. The PeeP method is tested using a series of case studies exploring four different products. Results suggest that probability density estimations developed through this method reflect the environmental impact of the product at both the product and component level. In the context of sustainable design research, the PeeP method is a viable methodology for assessing product design environmental impact prior to product realization. Our methodology can allow designers to identify high-impact components and reduce the cost of product redesign in practice.

An analysis of environmental impact of mechanical sharpener: Integrating DFMA and sustainable design analysis

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. S. M. Effendi ◽  
Z. Shayfull ◽  
H. Radhwan ◽  
Shafeeq Ahmad Shamim Ahmad ◽  
Abdul Qayyum Mohd Fauzi ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Impact ◽  
Sustainable Design ◽  
Design Analysis

Enhancing the environmental impact of alarm clock using DFMA and sustainable design analysis

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. S. M. Effendi ◽  
Z. Shayfull ◽  
H. Radhwan ◽  
Shafeeq Ahmad Shamim Ahmad ◽  
Nazirul Mubin Abd Aziz ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Impact ◽  
Sustainable Design ◽  
Design Analysis ◽  
Alarm Clock

scholarly journals A Framework for Assessing Commitment Indicators in Sustainable Development Decisions

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (9) ◽  
pp. 5234
Author(s):  
Mustafa S. Al-Tekreeti ◽  
Salwa M. Beheiry ◽  
Vian Ahmed
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Performance Indicators ◽  
Energy Use ◽  
Capital Projects ◽  
The Sustainable Development ◽  
Corporate Leaders ◽  
Corporate Decisions ◽  
Waste Energy ◽  
Infrastructure Project

Numerous decision support systems have been developed to address the decision-making process in organizations. However, there are no developed mechanisms to track commitment down the line to the decisions made by corporate leaders. This paper is a portion of a study that establishes a framework for a comprehensive metric system to assess commitment to Sustainable Development (SD) decisions down the line in capital projects, and sets the groundwork for further development of performance indicators for SD outcomes. This ultimately leads to investigating the relationship between commitment to corporate decisions and better project performance in SD parameters. Hence, this study explores the literature to extract relevant parameters that reflect the degree of the project participants’ commitment to SD decisions and to develop commitment indicators. The study created then validated an index to track this commitment along the project stages: the Sustainable Development Commitment Tracking Tool (SDCTT). The SDCTT was tested on an infrastructure project case study. In this paper, techniques relevant to the first stage of projects (planning and definition) are presented. The SDCTT is the groundwork for the future development of performance indicators for SD outcomes, and within the postulated model should ultimately contribute towards reducing project waste, energy use, and carbon emissions.

scholarly journals Towards Sustainable Mobility? The Influence of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Romanian Mobile Citizens in Spain

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (7) ◽  
pp. 4023
Author(s):  
Silvia Marcu
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development Goals ◽  
Human Mobility ◽  
Sustainable Mobility ◽  
The Sustainable Development ◽  
New Models ◽  
Challenges And Opportunities ◽  
Development Goals ◽  
Depth Interviews

Using the case study of Romanians in Spain, this article highlights how the COVID-19 crisis presents both challenges and opportunities when it comes to human mobility and sustainability. Drawing on in-depth interviews with mobile people during the period of lockdown and circulation restrictions, and in accordance with the objectives of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the paper advances and contributes to the relevance of sustainability and its impact on people’s mobility in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. I argue that even in the midst of the crisis, sustainable ways may be found to promote and protect human mobility. The paper raises the way sustainability acts as a driver, gains relevance and influence, and contributes to the creation of new models of resilient mobility in times of crisis. The conclusions defend the respect for the SDGs regarding human mobility and emphasise the role of people on the move as sustainable actors learning to overcome distance and the barriers to their mobility during the pandemic.

scholarly journals Anticipatory Non-Green-Phenomena Determination for Designing Eco-Design Products

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 621
Author(s):  
Hsin Rau ◽  
Mary Deanne M. Lagapa ◽  
Po-Hsun Chen
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Environmental Impact ◽  
Product Design ◽  
Determination Method ◽  
Washing Machine ◽  
Product Failure ◽  
Design Concepts ◽  
The World ◽  
World Business Council

The number of consumers with green awareness have grown these days and as a result they have turned to purchase eco-friendly products. For this reason, this study aims to propose a method for eco-design based on the anticipatory failure determination method to develop eco-design products. By using eco-design concepts adopted from the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, the process will limit the failures and issues related to environmental impact in product design. The proposed method for eco-design product in this study follows the following procedure. First, we analyze product failure. Second, we propose the determination of the non-green phenomenon of the failure. Thirdly, we integrate the intensified non-green phenomenon to generate non-green hypotheses and fourthly, we eliminate each non-green phenomenon hypothesis by introducing the contradiction matrix of TRIZ for obtaining solutions. Finally, we assess alternative eco-design solutions by evaluation. To verify the practicality of the new procedure, a washing machine is used as an example for illustration.

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