A Conceptual Design Tool for Resolving Conflicts Between Product Functionality and Environmental Impact

Product development organizations are unwilling to compromise product functionality, unit cost, or time to market in order to create products that have less environmental impact than that required by regulations. Thus, designers may face a conflict between improving product functionality and reducing environmental impact. The design for environment (DfE) tools currently available are inadequate with respect to helping designers determine how to resolve this conflict during the conceptual design phase. Design-by-analogy is a promising conceptual design approach for this problem. Examples of products that simultaneously reduce environmental impact and improve product functionality can inspire designers to do likewise. The challenges are to generate the relevant knowledge and to organize it in an accessible DfE tool. This paper describes an approach for generating and organizing this knowledge, an analysis of successful products, and a table of successful designs.

[1]  Arthur B. Markman,et al.  Effects of Analogous Product Representation on Design-By-Analogy , 2007 .

[2]  Chih-Chen Liu,et al.  Development of product green innovation design method , 2001, Proceedings Second International Symposium on Environmentally Conscious Design and Inverse Manufacturing.

[3]  L. H. Shu,et al.  Effects of Dichotomous Lexical Stimuli in Concept Generation , 2008 .

[4]  Jahau Lewis Chen,et al.  Eco-Innovative Examples for 40 TRIZ Inventive Principles , 2003 .

[5]  Kathryn Walsh,et al.  Product to service eco-innovation: the TRIZ model of creativity explored , 2000, Proceedings of the 2000 IEEE International Symposium on Electronics and the Environment (Cat. No.00CH37082).

[6]  A. Webb,et al.  TRIZ: an inventive approach to invention , 2002 .

[7]  George W. Woodruff,et al.  Incorporating Environmental Issues in Product Design and Realization , 1999 .

[8]  S. Ashley,et al.  Designing for the environment , 1993 .

[9]  G. S. Alʹtshuller,et al.  The Innovation Algorithm:TRIZ, systematic innovation and technical creativity , 1999 .

[10]  Rajesh Jugulum,et al.  Theory of Inventive Problem Solving (TRIZ) , 2008 .

[11]  Andrew King,et al.  An Assessment of Design-for-Environment Practices in Leading US Electronics Firms , 2000, Interfaces.

[13]  Srikanth Devanathan,et al.  Integration of Sustainability Into Early Design Through the Function Impact Matrix , 2010 .

[14]  Tomohiko Sakao,et al.  A QFD-centred design methodology for environmentally conscious product design , 2007 .

[15]  Kosuke Ishii,et al.  Life-cycle Design , 1996 .

[16]  Joseph R. Fiksel,et al.  Design for environment : creating eco-efficient products and processes , 1996 .

[17]  E Jones,et al.  Investigating the use of TRIZ in eco-innovation , 2000 .

[18]  Livio D. DeSimone,et al.  Eco‐Efficiency: The Business Link to Sustainable Development , 1997 .

[19]  Linda C. Schmidt,et al.  Constructing a Product Design for the Environment Process , 2008 .

[20]  Steven A. Melnyk,et al.  THE GAP BETWEEN THEORY AND PRACTICE , 2006 .

[21]  Jonathan Cagan,et al.  Overcoming Blocks in Conceptual Design: The Effects of Open Goals and Analogical Similarity on Idea Generation , 2008 .

[22]  Ellen Domb,et al.  The 39 Features of Altshuller's Contradiction Matrix , 2007 .

[23]  Linda C. Schmidt,et al.  Beyond Tools: A Design for Environment Process , 2005 .

[24]  Linda C. Schmidt,et al.  Design for Environment (DfE): Strategies, Practices, Guidelines, Methods, and Tools , 2007 .

[25]  J. Alexander.  Environmental Sustainability Versus Profit Maximization: Overcoming Systemic Constraints on Implementing Normatively Preferable Alternatives , 2007 .

[26]  Howard Greisdorf,et al.  Exploring Science: The Cognition and Development of Discovery Processes , 2003, J. Documentation.

[27]  Thomas J. Howard,et al.  Creative Stimulation in Conceptual Design: An Analysis of Industrial Case Studies , 2008 .