A design for the environment methodology to support an environmental management system

The demand for more stringent environmental regulation on product end‐of‐life and production processes is enhanced by customer concerns for environmental protection. This has increased the need for industry to address environmental issues in the product design process. The emergence of international standards for environmental management, such as the ISO 14000 series, has also created a strong incentive for manufacturers to promote environmentally conscious products and processes. Considerable progress has been made in design for the environment (DFE). However, there is still a need for a structured approach to DFE that addresses environmental concerns in a coherent way. This approach should also support an environmental management system (EMS). This paper describes an organised process to address the problem of integrating environmental concerns into an early product design process that is consistent with such international standards as ISO 14001 EMS. This approach may help to improve the environmental performance of a product and to support an organisation’s EMS.

[1]  T. Saaty,et al.  The Analytic Hierarchy Process , 1985 .

[2]  B. Schumacher,et al.  Approach to the Identification and Quantification of Environmental Effects during Product Life , 1992 .

[3]  D. Alting,et al.  The Life Cycle Concept as a Basis for Sustainable Industrial Production , 1993 .

[4]  Vijay A. Tipnis.  Challenges in Product Strategy, Product Planning and Technology Development for Product Life Cycle Design , 1994 .

[5]  Umberto Bertelè,et al.  Exploiting green strategies for competitive advantage , 1994 .

[6]  Leigh Holloway,et al.  Incorporating environmental principles into the design process , 1994 .

[7]  Graham K. Morbey,et al.  Total quality development: A step-by-step guide to world-class concurrent engineering , 1995 .

[8]  E.F. Johnson,et al.  A practical, customer-oriented DFE methodology , 1995, Proceedings of the 1995 IEEE International Symposium on Electronics and the Environment ISEE (Cat. No.95CH35718).

[9]  Braden Allenby,et al.  Matrix Approaches to Abridged Life Cycle Assessment , 1995 .

[10]  Leo Alting,et al.  Life cycle engineering and design , 1995 .

[11]  C. Mizuki,et al.  Design for environment-a survey of current practices and tools , 1996, Proceedings of the 1996 IEEE International Symposium on Electronics and the Environment. ISEE-1996.

[12]  D. Deitz,et al.  Engineering sustainable development , 1996 .

[13]  Michael Zwicky Hauschild,et al.  Elements in a new sustainable industrial culture Environmental assessment in product development , 1997 .

[14]  Daniel A. Crowl,et al.  Inherently safer chemical processes : a life cycle approach , 1997 .

[15]  Marion A. Hersh,et al.  A survey of systems approaches to green design with illustrations from the computer industry , 1998, IEEE Trans. Syst. Man Cybern. Part C.

[16]  Steve Poole,et al.  Environmental priorities in strategic product development , 2000 .