Investigation of a Process to Eco-Design Led Lighting Products to Enhance the Adoption of Eco-Design Methods and Tools by Industry

Jose L Casamayor,Daizhong Su

doi:10.3390/su13084512

Abstract

To date, many studies have been carried out to develop new approaches and methods to eco-design products. However, these have not been implemented and adopted by industry as much as they should. A better understanding of real-world industrial eco-design and development processes, and the eco-design tools applied during these, could inform the development of more effective and applicable eco-design methods and tools, for generic as well as for specific product categories (e.g., LED lighting products). This paper addresses this issue by describing and examining a real-world process followed to design and develop a LED lighting product by a lighting manufacturer, via case study research. The case study involved direct participatory observation to gather the data and provided new insights about the stages of the design and development process, as well as the tools applied, which were examined and discussed to inform the improvement of existing methods and tools, or the development of better new methods and tools.

Highlights

IntroductionMany published research studies focused on the analysis and development of eco-design methods and the integration of eco-design tools in design processes for generic products [13,14,15,16] and LED lighting products [17,18]
This paper has described and examined a design and development process to design a LED-based lighting product based on a real-world case study with a lighting manufacturer
The eco-design method followed required the application of additional tools, not used in the previous existing design process used by the company, which made the eco-design process more time-consuming and costly, when the new tool had to be purchased, and designers/engineers had never used them before, and had to learn how to use them, which was the case with the life cycle assessment (LCA)-based software Simapro tool

Summary

Introduction

Many published research studies focused on the analysis and development of eco-design methods and the integration of eco-design tools in design processes for generic products [13,14,15,16] and LED lighting products [17,18]. All these existing methods, approaches, and tools still have not achieved the full expected impact in industry [19,20], and in the environment, which means they are not being used or applied as much as they should. It enabled the researcher to see the problems of implementing eco-design methods and tools in real-world industrial situations, which can help to understand better the needs and barriers related with the wider adoption of eco-design methods and tools

Objectives

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Discussion

Conclusion