Analysis of Potential Relationships between Functional Analysis and Life Cycle Assessment

The design of products with environmental considerations is a global strategy based on life cycle thinking. All stages of the design process should take into account environmental considerations in order to face the environmental challenge. Unfortunately, designers encounter difficulties in the case of brand new products due to the absence of environmental impacts feedback. The designers need assistance early in the design process to acquire environmental knowledge. In order to solve this problem, the paper argues that the functional analysis of products (early stage in the design process) and Life Cycle Assessment (late stage in the design process) can benefit each other in a collaborative process. A comparative analysis is first proposed between Functional Analysis (FA) and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to highlight propositions that could assist both FA practitioners and LCA experts. A strategy is then proposed to create a win-win situation to enhance environmental knowledge early in the design process.