Exploring the Effectiveness of Providing Structured Design-for-the-Environment Strategies During Conceptual Design

The fuzzy front end of engineering design can present a difficult challenge, and as such, recent engineering design research has focused on guiding and influencing the way a designer ideates. Early ideation can be especially difficult when attempting to integrate specific design objectives in product design, called Design for X (DfX). This paper presents two experiments exploring the efficacy of a structured Design for the Environment (DfE) design method called the GREEn Quiz (Guidelines and Regulations for Early design for the Environment) that provides designers with sustainable design knowledge during the conceptual design phase. The GREEn Quiz operates on a web-based platform and queries the designer about their design concepts; an end-of-quiz report provides abstract DfE knowledge to designers. While this abstract knowledge was able to be applied by designers in a former study, we hypothesize that providing targeted, specific design strategies during conceptual design will enable novice designers to better integrate DfE. In this study, we created these DfE strategies, integrated these into the GREEn Quiz, and studied the efficacy of these strategies when presented to designers at both the expert and novice levels. Results suggest that respondents with access to the strategy-based GREEn Quiz produced concepts with evidence of more sustainable design decisions and higher solution quality scores. This work shows the promise of supplemental Design for the Environment methods for concept generation to enable the design of more environmentally sustainable products.

Can Design for the Environment be Worthwhile? Green Design for Manufacturers Brands When Confronted with Competition from Store Brands

To contribute to global sustainability, many manufacturers are starting to implement green product development and trying to provide environmentally friendly products. Although green products are environmentally beneficial to our society, the performance of green product development remains poor because of cannibalization from traditional alternatives at lower prices. This is particularly the case in the current unforgiving marketing reality in which many brand retailers, such as Wal-Mart, Tesco, and Carrefour, offer their own store brands as traditional alternatives. Although a large stream of research has studied the effects of competition on manufacturers’ green design, to the best of our knowledge, there is a dearth of research on the effects of competition from retailers’ store brands on manufacturers’ green design. To fill this gap, we present two models in which the manufacturer has an incentive to design for the environment, and the retailer has the flexibility to sell store brands (Model S), or it does not (Model N). Surprisingly, our analysis indicates that the presence of store brands may stimulate the manufacturer to release a new greener version of the national brand. Moreover, we find that although the presence of store brands is beneficial to the retailer and industry, it always hurts the manufacturer’s profitability. To incentivize the manufacturer to support Model S, we propose a two-part tariff contract.

The Material Indices Method in the Sustainable Engineering Design Process: A Review

The material indices method has its application in both the design of construction materials and products. The method has evolved since the 1960s and has been described in German, Russian, Polish, and English scientific literature. In the 1990s, the method was adapted to Design for the Environment with the inclusion of specific energy consumption indicators for various construction materials. The article cites six principles of Design for the Environment and presents specific energy consumption indicators according to various authors. This data was then used in two sample applications of the material indices method to determine the specific energy consumption of product manufacture: of a support structure of the standing frame and a compression spring design. In the conclusions, the significant limitations of the material indices method are emphasized, which are not extensively discussed in the literature on the subject, such as its high sensitivity to the accuracy of the adopted energy consumption indicators for materials in view of the actual production process; not taking into consideration all the negative aspects of the materials’ impact on the environment, or the difficulties associated with predicting the impact of material production technology on the material indices. On the other hand, their simple functional form makes them ideal for incorporation into modern CAD software and in product optimization at the initial stage of concept design.

Exploring the Effectiveness of Providing Structured DfE Design Strategies During Conceptual Design

The fuzzy front end of engineering design can present a difficult challenge, and as such, recent engineering design research has focused on guiding and influencing the way a designer ideates. Early ideation can be especially difficult when attempting to integrate specific design objectives in product design, called Design for X (DfX). Some examples of DfX are Design for Manufacturing (DfM), Design for Assembly (DfA), Design for Function (DfF), and Design for Safety (DfS). This paper will present two experiments exploring the efficacy of a structured Design for the Environment (DfE) design method called the GREEn Quiz (Guidelines and Regulations for Early design for the Environment) that provides designers with sustainable design knowledge during the conceptual design phase. The GREEn Quiz operates on a web-based platform and queries the designer about their design concepts; an end-of-quiz report provides abstract DfE knowledge to designers. While this abstract knowledge was able to be applied by designers in a former study, we hypothesize that providing targeted, specific design strategies during conceptual design may enable better integration in concept generation by novice designers. In this study, we created these DfE strategies, embedded these in the GREEn Quiz, and studied the efficacy of these strategies when presented to designers at both the expert and novice levels. Experimental results suggest that respondents with access to the strategy-based GREEn Quiz produced concepts with evidence of more sustainable design decisions and higher solution quality scores when compared to previous respondents and the control groups. This research encourages the consideration of downstream environmental impact knowledge during conceptual design, resulting in lower-impact products regardless of the previous DfE expertise of the designer.