Promoting Eco-Design: a Software Platform for Sustainable Product Design Abstract: Purpose Michele Germani*, Marco Mandolini*, Marco Marconi*, Marco Mengarelli*, Maura Mengoni*, Marta Rossi* *Department of Industrial Engineering and Mathematical Sciences, Università Politecnica delle Marche, via Brecce Bianche, 60100, Ancona Italy (m.germani@univpm.it, m.mandolini@univpm.it, marco.marconi@univpm.it, m.mengarelli@univpm.it, m.mengoni@univpm.it, marta.rossi@univpm.it) During past years several eco-design methodologies have been previously defined but none can be easily integrated in the traditional design process of manufacturing companies. This paper wants to overcome this lack and aims to define a methodology, called G.EN.ESI, to help also those designers without a specific know-how on eco-design, during the development of sustainable products. Design/methodology/approach The proposed methodology is composed by six main steps defined to link the eco-design activities with the traditional design activities, to the aim of defining a TO-BE design process. Also new tools have been defined in order to help designers in the assessment of the environmental and cost impacts of a product. These tools have been integrated in an univocal software package, called G.EN.ESI platform. The platform is composed by four tools for the definition of the life cycle model of the product (one for each product life cycle phase), two tools for the assessment of the environmental and cost impacts and a tool to guide the decision-making process. Furthermore, a web module to retrieve the necessary data from the supply chain subjects has been defined. Finally, the link with the CAD and PLM systems is proposed to increase the usability of the platform. Originality/value Using such a platform, the designer is supported by a robust workbench to perform all the analyses required to evaluate the product eco-sustainability for each phase of the product lifecycle. Hence, this software package is essential for companies to implement all the methodology steps without the need to heavily alter the consolidated modus operandi and the internal organization. Keywords: eco-design methodology, G.EN.ESI platform, sustainable design. 1. Introduction and state of the art 1.1 Introduction In the current global situation, the environmental problem is recognized as one of the most important issues. The concept of sustainability has become very important and is actually recognized as a key factor which can determine the success of a company in the market. Only the implementation of an eco-design approach can lead to the production of green sustainable products, but usually these important concepts are not applied by companies which tend to follow the classical criteria of the design process. The environmental assessment and improvement phases have to be integrated with the other classical phases, such as mechanical or electrical design. Only in this way, environmental requirements can be taken into account as well as the other traditional design constraints, such as performances and cost. The paper wants to develop an eco-design methodology, called G.EN.ESI (Green ENgineering design), to help product designers in ecological design choices, without losing sight of typical practicalities of industry. The proposed methodology is mainly oriented to those companies without any specific background on the ecodesign argument. For this reason, the research was finalized to clearly define an eco-design methodology and to contextualize it within a real case of product design process. 303
The re-engineered design process will be supported by a new set of integrated software tools. Even if some of the tools are not strictly innovative from a scientific point of view, their integration represents the greatest novelty. This integration, in fact, allows designers to build a product lifecycle model, to assess the environmental impact and life cycle cost of a product and to modify the design solution in order to obtain a more sustainable configuration. The use of this platform, during the early design phases, guarantees the implementation of an ecodesign strategy. Moreover, once these tools will be integrated into the platform, the end user could provide the input product information directly to the platform, then, the data will automatically flow among the tools. 1.2 State of the art The increasing interest in environmental issues led to the development of several methods aimed at measuring and assessing the environmental impacts of specific products (Bovea and Wang, 2007). In this part of the paper, different ways of eco-design integration into the product development process are presented. A focus is done on approaches using eco-design methodologies and ecodesign platforms. Methodologies refer to an overall system containing certain tools, principles and rules selected to aid designers in completing the eco-design process. Eco-design platforms are used to support the previous activities. A first methodology approach to consider is the one given in the ISO/TR 14062 (2002) document, which looks at the issue of environmental aspects integration into design from an environmental management perspective. However, it is too general and not sufficiently illustrated to be efficiently applied. Other approaches which aim to integrate eco-design in the design process are proposed by different authors. Navarro et al. (2005) described a series of activities that make up the eco-design process. Firstly, it takes traditional design activities and adds environmental considerations. Secondly, it introduces eco-design planning activities in the early design stages and evaluation activities during the later design stages. This methodology is clearly inspired by the PROMISE-manual developed by Brezet and van Hemel (1997). A quite similar approach is the STRETCH methodology developed by Cramer and Stevels (1997). Another approach linking environmental management and design activities exists in the ARPI framework (Simon et al. 2000) where a parallel methodology is applied between the strategic level and the operational level. However, due to the nature and the structure of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) this approach may not be relevant for this kind of companies. Hauschild et al. (2004) tackled the issue of getting the right focus, i.e. addressing the most important environmental impact, in introducing a hierarchy of focusing. Le Pochat et al. (2007) proposed a method to facilitate integration of eco-design devoted to the problem encountered by SMEs: the EcoDesign Integration Method for SMEs (EDIMS). Fargnoli and Kimura (2007) presented a new design process for the development of sustainable products, supported by a series of indications providing information on how to apply the most common eco-design tools. All those different methodologies highlight important eco-design activities but they do not provide specific tools to support the design process. A promising approach is to interconnect environmental tools with design tools daily used by designers, such as Computer Aided Design (CAD) and Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) tools. The crux of this problem is more complicated than extracting the product digital structure from a CAD Tool, and then send them as inputs into environmental assessment tools. In the GIPIE project, Theret et al. (2011) focus on the development of a platform able to support environmental assessment tools (Life Cycle Assessment) or restricted substances compliance tools. The objective is to collect from CAD and other PLM applications the environmental data, to validate them using an adapted workflow and to publish them to the environmental analyst applications, Compliance Check and LCA. In that project, some perspectives are raised like the integration of simplified eco-design tools that are not only focused on the use of LCA tools, because any suppliers are not skilled enough or cannot support this kind of tools (knowledge maintenance cost). Seeds4Green (2013) is a wiki platform that aims at gathering and sharing documents related to the environmental evaluation of products and services. The purpose of the platform is to collaboratively build knowledge on the environmental quality of goods and to diffuse the results of LCA studies (Teulon and Canaguier, 2012). A similar initiative is the P2I (Intelligent Information Platform) developed for the CREER (Cluster Research: Excellence in Eco-design and Recycling) in order to support the gathering, classification and sharing of technological and legal information on recycling and eco-design (P2I, 2013). The Austrian ECODESIGN Information platform aims to collect all interesting information and links about ECODESIGN and make it accessible to a broad audience (ECODESIGN, 2013). This platform includes different tools and notably ECODESIGN PILOT - Product Innovation Learning and Optimization Tool. 2. G.EN.ESI methodology and contextualization 2.1 Methodology A methodology was developed aiming to guide designers to integrate eco-design activities in the traditional design process (Figure 1). This methodology represents the base of the software platform described in the last section of this paper. The first step is a preliminary analysis which is required to define the functions and the related modules of a new product. Steps 2, 3, 4 and 5 represents the activities that is necessary to integrate in the design phase in order to include environmental considerations. The last step goes beyond the design process of a single product and it is related to company long term decisions about sustainability objectives. 304
1 2 3 4 5 6 Functional Analysis Initial assessment and determination of environmental hot spots Determination of the environmental strategy and deployment in indicators (targets) Guidance Sustainability check Impact of the decision in the long term company objectives LCA, LCC, Specific modules, Reports Indicators, Reports Rules, Guidelines LCA, LCC, Specific modules, Reports Figure 1: Step of the proposed methodology Step 1. The first step of the methodology is to carry out a functional and a modular analysis. The modular analysis consists in grouping sets of components in modules. This is a necessary step because the eco-design goal is to maintain functionality whilst minimizing environmental impacts and using resources efficiently. This phase of the methodology is not supported by the proposed platform, since it is a preliminary analysis of the product which is performed at the beginning of the design process. Step 2. The second step of the methodology is to realize an initial environmental assessment of a product. It consists also of identifying the most environmental critical points, during the product life cycle, called environmental hot spots. Different ways are used to find them; the designer will carry out this step based on literature and legislation, previous experience, and an initial assessment phase. Once the environmental hot spots are defined, they are reported in documents to inform all the design team members. Some elements are needed to realize in this step: A tool to manage and use previous experiences with the aim to solve the current problems; A simplified LCA tool and a LCC tool for the environmental evaluation and the cost evaluation if necessary; Specific modules to calculate other criteria of the products, such as recyclability rate or disassembly rate; Reports that are generated to show the results of the assessment and to highlight the environmental hot spots. Step 3. The next step enables the company, and specifically the design team, to establish the environmental strategy. The strategy is then translated into indicators levels: the designers team set design targets translated in values for the chosen indicators. The design targets depend on different criteria mainly the environmental hot spots, the company objectives and the product. Step 4. This step aims to help the designer to improve the product performances, using guidelines and checklists. It is a continuous and iterative phase of assessment, advice and action. Specific elements are thus needed for the advising activity: Eco-design rules and guidelines; A tool to assist designers in improving the sustainability performance of the product through the utilization of existing company knowledge. Step 5. During this step, the final sustainability check is carried out. This evaluation highlights the potential points where the design still does not reach the targets. Step 6. The last step consists in the assessment of the previous decision impacts from two perspectives. The first one is about the project itself in order to redefine the strategic indicators if needed. The second one concerns the impacts of the decisions on long term company objectives. 2.2 Contextualization In order to implement an eco-design approach in a company, some changes at different levels are necessary. First of all, designers have to be able to consider all the product life cycle and solve problems for each life cycle phase, from manufacturing to dismantling. In an eco-design process not only the classical requirements (functional, performance, etc.) have to be considered as input. Environmental requirements for a new product must be defined at the beginning of the project. These include the environmental specifications required by customers, by the market and by legislations, as well as the environmental business objectives set by the company management team. In order to realize an environmental assessment and improvement for a product, a variety of data needs to be collected. This data come from inside and outside the boundaries of a company, from the raw material extraction phase to the End of Life (EoL). Furthermore, some data are outside the company boundaries and are spread on numerous suppliers, subcontractors, recyclers, etc.. This implies the need to create data networks which involve not only the environmental division of a company but also the other internal divisions as well as subjects of the supply chain. The implementation of an eco-design strategy entails some transformations of the traditional design process. As described above, new data have to be considered and used by designers during their activities. Hence, new eco-design tools are necessary in addition to the traditional ones. To implement the proposed methodology the following tools are needed: Specific tools to assist the collection of the necessary data to perform life cycle environmental and economic 305
assessment of products. To address each life cycle phase four specific tools have been thought to retrieve the different kinds of data. They are called: Eco- Material for the material selection and manufacturing phase, 0Km for the transport phase, DfEE for the use phase and LeanDfD for the EoL phase. These tools also have the objective to compare different design solutions in terms of environmental and cost indicators in order to optimize each life cycle phase of each module of the product under analysis. A sustainability calculation module composed by a simplified life cycle assessment tool and a simplified life cycle cost tool. This module returns several environmental indicators as well as other indicators. A Case Based Reasoning (CBR) tool that assists designers in improving the environmental performances of the product through the utilization of existing knowledge and relevant eco-design guidelines. All these tools are integrated in the G.EN.ESI software platform which is described in the successive section of this paper. The use of this platform permits to take into account environmental requirements during the design activities. Since this paper mostly focuses on company which have limited or null know-how on eco-design, the contextualization of the proposed eco-design methodology in the traditional product design process requires the introduction of a new figure. Beside the Project Manager, which has the responsibility to manage and steer the project in order to reach the best feasible solution, an Environmental Design Manager, should be appointed to the aim of managing eco-design questions. His primary role is to support the introduction of environmental issues within the design team. This new figure can be an expert of the company or an external consultant. However, the last scenario is the most common because currently there is a well-known lack of eco-design knowledge in most of the companies. In case of the Project Manager does not have the skills to understand the environmental data and indicators, he needs to be assisted by this environmental expert in order to take informed decisions. For this reason the Environmental Design Manager should become a member of the Project Management Team which is responsible to steer the project and also define the environmental requirements. But this new figure can also support the design team in discussing and solving environmental issues with the different departments. By working in strict contact with the environmental expert, the Project Manager can acquire know-how about sustainability. As this knowledge increases, environmental responsibilities will tend to be shared throughout the design team. Therefore, the need of an Environmental Design Manager is limited to the first period of the methodology implementation and only in company without any know-how about eco-design. In the long term, his tasks can be performed by the Project Manager and by designers which will have acquired the necessary competences. Alongside the traditional design steps, an Environmental Development phase is required during the Embodiment Design to perform the necessary environmental and cost assessments and improvements of the product, before the prototype manufacturing and approval. The steps of this phase represent the practical implementation of the G.EN.ESI methodology steps within a design process. 3. G.EN.ESI platform By the use of the platform tools (Figure 2), companies are able to easily integrate the proposed eco-design approach in a traditional product design process. Hence, this software package is essential to implement all the methodology steps without the need to heavily alter the consolidated modus operandi and the internal organization. Figure 2: G.EN.ESI platform architecture 306
3.1 G.EN.ESI Platform functionalities The platform is mainly based on a specific LCA database. It contains a large set of engineering materials (over 4000) with the relative manufacturing processes. Each of them is characterized by multiple environmental indicators (energy consumption, CO2 emission and water consumption) and by its unitary cost. This database is accessed by each specific tool, described below. Eco-Material is dedicated to the management of the material selection and manufacturing phase, supporting the designer in the choice of the best solution. The Ecomaterial tool evaluates the most sustainable materials on the basis of embodiment energy needed for primary extraction and production, the exploitation of resources and minerals, the quantity of greenhouse gases emitted and the possibility of recycling. According to the selected material, the tool allows the selection of the related manufacturing processes to finish a component. The DfEE (Design for Energy Efficiency) is a tool for the evaluation of the environmental impact and Life Cycle Cost of the energy consuming components. For instance, it provides an useful support during the design phase of electric motors. To obtain an accurate assessment of the environmental impact during the use phase, the tool gives to designers the possibility to define multiple working points for the energy using components. 0km is a tool dedicated to the management of the transport phases along the product life cycle, from component supplying to dismantling. Considering the geographic positions of the suppliers, producers and dismantlers, the tool is able to provide the transport links necessary to move a component during its lifecycle, with the related environmental and economic impacts. LeanDfD is a tool dedicated to the product End-of-Life (EoL) management. The tool permits to evaluate disassembly times and relative costs of the entire product or of a specific component (or subassembly). LeanDfD is also able to calculate some EoL indices which permit to evaluate the most convenient EoL strategy for each component (or subassembly), considering the disassembly cost. For the chosen EoL scenario, the environmental impact is calculated. S-LCA and LCC are reporting tools which collect the information calculated by each tool in order to generate a report containing the environmental and economic data referred to a single product component and to a single life cycle phase. In addition, also the overall evaluation for the entire product in all the life cycle phases is provided. CBR is a tool which represents the knowledge and the best practices of a company. It helps the designer in the design process through the acquired company knowledge and the well-established eco-design guidelines. The knowledge is represented by all the choices made from the designer during the development of other similar products. Using this knowledge, the design process can be assisted and guided in the selection of the best material, geometry, commercial components and so on. The SWP (Supplier Web Portal) allows suppliers to define for each product they sell, the economic and environmental indicators, if available, or the basic information to calculate them (manufacturing processes, logistic data, etc.). These data are uploaded into a specific database connected with the G.EN.ESI platform. Thanks to these information, designers can choose a particular commercial component that will be used by the platform for the product life cycle analysis. Therefore, this module is used at first by suppliers, that input data related to components they sell, and then by designers to choose those components from a list of different alternatives. The Supplier Web Portal database is supervised by the company where the G.EN.ESI platform is deployed. Only suppliers which receive authorization from the lead company can upload their products into the Supplier Web Portal. It is the company that certifies its suppliers. The SWP provides to each analysis tool some necessary information related to commercial components. For example, in case of an electric motors, such information are: Energy consumption for different working points used by DfEE; Production site of the supplier used by 0Km to calculate the necessary transportation links; Cost used by LCC during the report generation and by LeanDfD for the calculation of some End of Life indices. 3.2 G.EN.ESI Platform use G.EN.ESI Platform can be accessed by two different types of users: Suppliers and Designers (or environmental experts) of a company. The first can use the platform to provide essential information about commercial components. The second, instead, are the main user of the platform which uses it as a system to easily integrate an eco-design approach in the product design process. Supplier Web Portal is the module of the platform dedicated to suppliers. Thanks to the web-based interface, this type of users can upload all the necessary data about commercial components. All this information is stored in the Commercial Component DB and can be used by designers to perform an S-LCA/LCC analysis. Therefore, suppliers are provider of data required by designers to assess the environmental and cost impacts of their products, and permits to consider components that the company does not manufacture internally. In this way, designers can easily retrieve and use data coming from outside the company boundaries. Designers can use the G.EN.ESI Platform to rapidly estimate the impacts of products, during the product development process, when the available information about the life cycle and the time are usually limited. Thanks to the links with the company CAD System and PLM database, the platform is able to retrieve the necessary data (geometric and no geometric) to start an analysis. Using the platform tools, designers are able to build a model of the whole product life cycle performing the following actions: 307
Selection of materials and processes for each component which is internally manufactured by the company (Eco-Material tool); Selection of the necessary commercial components (from Supplier Web Portal); Modeling and evaluation of the use phase of energy using components (DfEE tool); Evaluation of the disassembly and EoL phases of each product component (LeanDfD tool). 4. Conclusions The paper presents an innovative eco-design approach to guide designers in the development of sustainable products. It has been defined to be general and applicable in different industrial cases. A re-engineered process, with new design steps, input/output data, actors and tools, has been defined to demonstrate the practical applicability of the proposed methodology. This eco-design process is supported by the proposed software platform, which integrates several tools to help manufacturing companies to easily implement an eco-design strategy without the needs to radically change their organization. By the use of the G.EN.ESI platform, designers are able to compare different design solutions, considering environmental impact and life cycle cost. The different tools help designers in the building of the life cycle product model, in the simultaneous assessment of the product environmental and cost performances and guide them during the product improvement. The web portal dedicated to suppliers permits also to retrieve all the necessary information about commercial components coming from the supply chain. Finally, the integration with company CAD and PLM systems increases the usability of the platform. Future works will consist in the platform experimentation during the design phase of different companies. In particular, manufacturers of cooker hoods and electric motors for household appliances will be involved. In this way, it will be possible to measure the quantitative achieved benefits in terms of product sustainability. Since the electric motor is one of the most important household appliance components from an environmental point of view, also the relationships within the supply chain, in terms of eco-design data exchanging, will be monitored and evaluated thanks to the use of the proposed web portal dedicated to suppliers. 5. Acknowledgement This research is funded by the European Community s 7th Framework Programme within the G.EN.ESI project (NMP.2011.3.1-1-280371, www.genesi-fp7.eu). The paper has been possible thanks to the collaboration of the project partners. 6. References Bovea, M.D. and Wang, B. (2007). Redesign methodology for developing environmentally conscious products. International Journal of Production Research, 45(18 19), 4057 4072. Brezet, H. and Van Hemel, C. (1997). Ecodesign: a promising approach to sustainable production and consumption. Renouf Publishing Company Limited, Paris. Cramer, J.M. and Stevels, A.L.N. (1997). Strategic environmental product planning within Philips sound & vision. Environmental Quality Management, 7(1), 91 102. ECODESIGN Information platform, http://www.ecodesign.at/index.en.html, accessed on March 2013. Fargnoli, M. and Kimura, F. (2007). The Optimization of the Design Process for an Effective Use in Eco- Design. Proc. 14th CIRP International Conference on Life Cycle Engineering, Tokyo, Japan, 59 64. Hauschild, M.Z., Jeswiet, J. and Alting, L. (2004). Design for Environment Do We Get the Focus Right?. Annals of the CIRP, 53(1), 1 4. International Organization for Standardization (2002). ISO/TR 14062:2002 Environmental management - Integrating environmental aspects into product design and development. Genève, Switzerland. Le Pochat, S., Bertoluci, G. and Froelich, D. (2007). Integrating ecodesign by conducting changes in SMEs. Journal of Cleaner Production, 15(7), 671 680. Navarro, G., Rizo, T.C., Ceca, S.B. and Collado Ruiz M.J. (2005). Ecodesign Function and Form, Classification of Ecodesign Tools According to Their Functional Aspects. Proc. of the 15th International Conference on Engineering Design (ICED05), Melbourne, Australia, 605 606. P2I, http://www.clustercreer.com/en/proj_veille.html, accessed on March 2013. Seeds4green, http://seeds4green.open-green.net/, accessed on January 2013. Simon, M., Poole, S., Sweatman, A., Evans, S., Bhamra, T. and McAloone, T. (2000). Environmental priorities in strategic product development. Business Strategy and the Environment, 9(6), 367 377. Theret, J.P., Zwolinski, P. and Mathieux, F. (2011). Integrating CAD, PLM and LCA: a new architecture & integration proposal. Proc. of the International Conference on Renewable Energy and Eco-Design in Electrical Engineering, Lille, France, 1 6. Teulon, H. and Canaguier, B. (2012). Seeds4Green - Free collaborative internet platform for LCA studies. Electronics Goes Green 2012+ (EGG), 2012 (9), 1-4. 308