Resource Optimized Product Design – Assessment of a Product's Life Cycle Resource Efficiency by Combining LCA and PLM in the Product Development

Abstract

Decisions in the product design phase have a significant influence on the resource demand of a product over its entire life cycle. However, relationships between decisions made in the design phase and the life cycle are difficult to evaluate and express. Hence, resource efficiency is typically only assessed after the product has already been designed and gone into production. If the impacts of decisions made in the design phase are neglected a considerable potential for saving resources is ignored.The aim of the presented work is to make use of this potential. Therefore the determination of the connections between design decisions and resource demand in the manufacturing, use and end of life phase is essential. Mapping these connections and the use of LCA methods allows for the expression of the overall resource demand as a function of the product's design. With this information at hand a design engineer is able to evaluate a design early enough i.e. before going into production.The provided approach results in an integration of an LCA tool into the engineering workplace consisting of a PLM and a CAD system. It aims for significantly more resource efficient products by partially automated creation and evaluation of alternative product designs. Therefore, design engineers are enabled to develop products with an enhanced resource efficiency over the entire product lifecycle.