Understanding and developing ecodesign support for environmentally conscious product development

Abstract

Producing eco-friendly products has become the need of the present due to the alarming conditions of global warming issues and depletion of natural resources. Global Footprint Network estimated the ecological footprints for over 200 nations in 2016 and found that the rate at which natural resources are being utilized is 1.6 times more than the rate at which they are renewed. These issues have forced the industries to adopt eco-design strategies in their production processes. Eco-design is understood to be the systematic integration of environmental considerations into the design process across the product life cycle, from cradle to grave. Although the concept of ecodesign was introduced at the beginning of the 1990s, but still its growth has not advanced at the rate which is required to achieve a more sustainable society. The research on ecodesign is well established at the academic level, but its implementation in industries is still limited. There are various ecodesign supports available in the form of tools and methods, but designers find it difficult to use these tools for developing environmentally conscious products. It may happen due to the gaps existing between the characteristics of the available tools and the actual requirements of designers from these tools. Environmentally conscious product development is a complex process and it requires a variety of tasks to be completed. It is unlikely for a single tool to full fill all these complex requirements. Therefore, an integration of existing ecodesign tools can be an effective option to deal with these issues. However, finding a set of tools to be integrated is itself a question that needs to be answered. The concept of ecodesign is beneficial if adopted as early as possible in the product development process. Therefore, designers must be provided with ecodesign support to help their decision-making during the initial stages of the product development process. The main aim of this research is to develop support that can help the designers to adopt the concept of ecodesign for producing environmentally conscious products. Before developing the ecodesign support, it is important to understand the factors that can stimulate the successful and effective adoption of ecodesign. Also, various requirements of the designers expected from an ecodesign support should be understood clearly. In this research, the first objective was focussed on identifying the factors that influence the adoption of ecodesign in industries. This study does not only help to identify the key factors affecting the implementation of ecodesign in industries but also the key stakeholder having the onus to ensure successful adoption of ecodesign into the routine activities of companies. The factors affecting ecodesign were identified and analysed by involving the experts from industries and academia. The outcomes of this research revealed that the poor environmental strategies of companies are the main hurdles in the adoption of ecodesign. Also, it was found that designers are the key stakeholders for the successful adoption of ecodesign because even if the government puts strict environmental regulations and the top management of the organization accepts it, ultimately, the designers will have the responsibility to bring the concept of ecodesign into products. Therefore, designers must be provided with ecodesign supports. Since designers are directly involved in the design and development of eco-friendly products, therefore it is important to understand their actual requirements from an ecodesign support. Thus, in the second objective, we identified the characteristics of an ecodesign support that are required by the designers for environmentally conscious product development. It will assist the tool developers to bridge the gap between the available features of tools and the actual requirements of designers from these tools. Since most of the ecodesign supports are developed by design researchers at the academic level and used by engineering designers within the industries, therefore the individual perspective of design researchers and engineering designers were studied through survey-based research. A total of 32 designers were included in this study which consisted of 15 engineering designers and 17 design researchers. This study revealed that the priorities of engineering designers for ecodesign support were significantly different from that of design researchers. Although there is a handful number of ecodesign support methods and tools available, these supports are not being used by the designers. Therefore, it is better to understand the strength and weaknesses of the existing supports before developing our own ecodesign method. Thus, in the third objective, the effectiveness of existing ecodesign tools was analyzed on the basis of the requirements and priorities of designers which was established in the previous objective. Results showed that Checklist, Material, Energy and Toxicity (MET) Matrix and Life Cycle Design Strategies (LiDS) are the three tools that satisfy most of the requirements of the designers. Further, it was identified that if these three tools are modified and integrated together in a specific sequence, then they can be used to develop an effective ecodesign method for environmentally conscious product development. In the fourth objective, an ecodesign method was developed. This method was based on a product modelling approach which was followed by the integration of three ecodesign tools in a logical sequence (as mentioned in the previous objective). The tools were modified before integration so that the developed methodology could be easily understood and utilized even by a novice designer. This methodology was evaluated by conducting experiments with engineering designers. The design of an office stapler and a hand blender was taken as two case studies for method evaluation. The proposed ecodesign method triggered the designers to conduct various design interventions for modifying the product features to achieve a better environmental performance of the products. The proposed method helped the designers to design the products with a reduced environmental impact of 49% in comparison to the normal scenario. However, designers felt that additional support could be provided for the environmental evaluation of a product concept in the early design stage. This requirement of designers was in line with the last research objective formulated in this research. In the fifth objective, a tool was developed to support the decision-making of designers in the early design stage. This tool is based on an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) model and provides flexibility to the designers to decide the optimum levels of life cycle design parameters for minimizing the environmental impact and life cycle cost of the products during the initial design stage. The accuracy and time efficiency of the tool was verified by comparing its results with the results obtained by an established LCA software, i.e., GaBi ts 9.2. It was observed that the results obtained by the proposed tool were very close to the results achieved through GaBi. Also, the time efficiency of the proposed tool was significantly higher than that of GaBi. These objectives, as mentioned above, helped to develop a comprehensive understanding of the factors affecting the development of environmentally conscious products. This understanding laid the foundation for the development of ecodesign support. The developed supports were able to assist the designers in developing products with better environmental performance. Also, the developed supports do not bound the designers to acquire specific knowledge or skills to use these supports.