Eco-Architecture Analysis as a Method of End-of-Life Decision Making for Sustainable Product Design

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Min Jung Kwak ◽  
Yoo Suk Hong ◽  
Nam Wook Cho
Keyword(s):  
Product Design ◽  
Design Stage ◽  
Connected Components ◽  
Sustainable Product Design ◽  
Early Design Stage ◽  
Effective Manner ◽  
Sustainable Product ◽  
Novel Concept ◽  
End Of Life Decision ◽  
The Given

In recent years, sustainable product design has become a great concern to product manufacturers. An effective way to enhance the product sustainability is to design products that are easy to disassemble and recycle. An EOL strategy is concerned with how to disassemble a product and what to do with each of the resulting disassembled parts. A sound understanding of the EOL strategy from the early design stage could improve the ease of disassembly and recycling in an efficient and effective manner. We introduce a novel concept of eco-architecture which represents a scheme by which the physical components are allocated to EOL modules. An EOL module is a physical chunk of connected components or a feasible subassembly which can be simultaneously processed by the same EOL option without further disassembly. In this paper, a method for analyzing and optimizing the eco-architecture of a product in the architecture design stage is proposed. Using mathematical programming, it produces an optimal eco-architecture based on the estimation of the economic values and costs for possible EOL modules under the given environmental regulations.

scholarly journals Metrics for Measuring Sustainable Product Design Concepts

Energies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (12) ◽  
pp. 3469
Author(s):  
Ji Han ◽  
Pingfei Jiang ◽  
Peter R. N. Childs
Keyword(s):  
Product Design ◽  
End Of Life ◽  
Environmental Impacts ◽  
Conceptual Design ◽  
Design Stage ◽  
Sustainable Product Design ◽  
Early Design ◽  
Design Concepts ◽  
Concept Evaluation ◽  
Sustainable Product

Although products can contribute to ecosystems positively, they can cause negative environmental impacts throughout their life cycles, from obtaining raw material, production, and use, to end of life. It is reported that most negative environmental impacts are decided at early design phases, which suggests that the determination of product sustainability should be considered as early as possible, such as during the conceptual design stage, when it is still possible to modify the design concept. However, most of the existing concept evaluation methods or tools are focused on assessing the feasibility or creativity of the concepts generated, lacking the measurements of sustainability of concepts. The paper explores key factors related to sustainable design with regard to environmental impacts, and describes a set of objective measures of sustainable product design concept evaluation, namely, material, production, use, and end of life. The rationales of the four metrics are discussed, with corresponding measurements. A case study is conducted to demonstrate the use and effectiveness of the metrics for evaluating product design concepts. The paper is the first study to explore the measurement of product design sustainability focusing on the conceptual design stage. It can be used as a guideline to measure the level of sustainability of product design concepts to support designers in developing sustainable products. Most significantly, it urges the considerations of sustainability design aspects at early design phases, and also provides a new research direction in concept evaluation regarding sustainability.

Sustainable Product Design by a Simultaneous Consideration of Pre-Life and End-of-Life of Products

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Minjung Kwak ◽  
Harrison M. Kim
Keyword(s):  
Product Design ◽  
End Of Life ◽  
Life Stage ◽  
Product Recovery ◽  
Design Stage ◽  
Manufacturing Companies ◽  
Sustainable Product Design ◽  
Recovery Method ◽  
Recovery Potential ◽  
Sustainable Product

Product recovery has become a field of rapidly growing interest for product manufacturers as a promising solution for product stewardship as well as economic viability. As product recovery is a process highly dependent upon the way a product is designed, it should be considered early at the design stage so that the product may be designed to facilitate efficient and effective recovery at its end-of-life stage. To make a product easy to recover, manufacturing companies first need to understand the links between product design and recovery profit. They should be able to evaluate which design is better than others and why that is so. To accommodate such companies that seek for a design-for-recovery method, in this paper, a comparative study is conducted to analyze how design differences affect product recovery and what architecture characteristics are desirable from the end-of-life perspective. Three cell phone handset designs sharing the same design concept but entailing different architecture are created, for which the individual designs and the recovery potential of each design are evaluated under three different scenarios. The results highlight preferred design alternatives with their design implications for sustainable product design.

scholarly journals Sustainable Tourism Product Development: An Application of Product Design Concepts

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (14) ◽  
pp. 7957
Author(s):  
Marco Haid ◽  
Julia N. Albrecht
Keyword(s):  
Product Design ◽  
Sustainable Tourism ◽  
Sustainable Product Design ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Design Concepts ◽  
Design For Sustainability ◽  
Tourism Product ◽  
German Speaking ◽  
Multiple Characteristics ◽  
Sustainable Product

This study examines sustainable tourism products in tourism destinations. Based on concepts of sustainable product design, our study proposes a framework for sustainable tourism products by adapting an existing Design for Sustainability Framework to consider and analyze the characteristics and themes of sustainable (tourism) products as well as their impact and scope. Using a pragmatic qualitative approach, 15 semi-structured interviews with destination managers from the German-speaking Alpine region formed the empirical basis of the study. The results emphasize key themes and multiple characteristics associated with sustainable tourism products in tourist destinations, addressing all sustainability components and design innovation levels. This study is the first to apply existing sustainable product design concepts to destination contexts and discuss their applicability for sustainable tourism products. For practitioners, this study provides support for the development of sustainable tourism products and contributes to a better understanding of the effects and levels of these products as well as sustainability marketing.

SUSTAINABILITY ASSESSMENT METHODOLOGY IN PRODUCT DESIGN: A REVIEW AND DIRECTIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH

2016 ◽  
Vol 79 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohd Fahrul Hassan ◽  
Muhamad Zameri Mat Saman ◽  
Salwa Mahmood ◽  
Nik Hisyamudin Muhd Nor ◽  
Mohd Nasrull Abdol Rahman
Keyword(s):  
Product Design ◽  
Design Process ◽  
Sustainability Assessment ◽  
Integrated Design ◽  
Working Environment ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Sustainable Product Design ◽  
Great Opportunity ◽  
Product Design Process ◽  
Sustainable Product

To achieve sustainable product design, it is crucial to use sustainability assessment during the product design process. In this paper, numerous sustainability assessment methodologies in product design are reviewed. A comprehensive assessment of sustainability has been reported to present better performance for improving product sustainability. This review focused on the consideration of sustainability elements by previous researchers that have proposed integrated design tools, commercial software tools and combination both methods in supporting the methodologies. Based on this review, it can be concluded that the inclusion of sustainability performance among the assessment criteria in the design process activities is suggested as a critical point of concern which presents a challenge and is a great opportunity to develop useful guidelines or directions for industries or any product-based project so that the proposed approach will be accepted for implementation in the working environment.

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