Environmentally-Friendly Product Development Methods and Tools

About this book

Introduces methods to improve the environmental characteristics of products. Every manufactured product has environmental impacts during its life-cycle. These arise in the product's manufacture, use, recycling and disposal. In the past designers have focussed only on technical and economical aspects when developing new products, taking into account market-conditions and their company's resources. However, designing a product in accordance with environmental demands requires that designers consider potential influences from all part of its life-cycle.

Environmentally-Friendly Product Development describes an integrated approach that assists designers to develop environmentally-friendly products, illustrating the methods and tools with case studies. Process and information modelling, life-cycle assessment and ecological product optimisation are surveyed in detail. Unique to Environmentally-Friendly Product Development is the introduction of the Eco Design Workbench – a computer based design environment that supports the designer during the product development process.

Contents

- Introduction
- Case Study: From Vision to Reality
- From the Market to Holistically Optimised Product Concepts
- Integrated Information Model for Development of Environmentally Sound Products
- Product Development Environment: From Concept to Application
- Final Summary and Assessment
- Methods and Tools
- Appendix (10 pages)
- Bibliography
- Glossary

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