A Systematic Framework for Environmentally Conscious Design

Abstract

In this chapter, a systematic framework for environmentally conscous design purposes is outlined. It focuses on ensuring better environmental performance by means of selecting environmentally friendly design alternatives. Since the environmental performance of a product relies on varied issues including nature resources consumption, manufacturing and distribution efficiency, and end-of-life management, designers have to face complicated trade-offs during the processes of product design. Our framework contains two parts for dealing with the complicated trade-offs. These two parts are ([1) the individual assessment for each life cycle stage, and ([2) the overall assessment for entire product life cycle. The individual assessment tool incorporates House of Quality (HOQ) with fuzzy set theory and Analytic Hierarchy Proces (AHP), and is used in analyzing the interrelations between environmentally conscious requirements and product design criteria. The overall assessment method is based upon the concept of product life cycle design, which involves a fouistep analysis so that the comprehensive environmental effects can be captured at the up-front design stage.