Decision Making within the Conceptual Design Phase of Eco-Friendly Products

A contribution for environment protection is the conceptual design of eco-friendly products, considering information of main product life cycle phases: Development, manufacturing, usage. Base of operations is product generation A, where the development is closed and the manufacturing/usage phase is ongoing. The designer of the subsequently product generation B has different possibilities to consider eco-friendly aspects and resource saving, e.g. incorporate Carry-Over- Parts, parts for reuse, upgradeable components or parts for refurbishing. The challenge for the designer is the decision complexity: He needs a lot of eco-related information of product generation A on component-level, e.g. CO2-emission, disassembly procedures, reliability information. This paper shows a concept, how to make eco- and sustainability-related decisions within the conceptual design phase of a subsequently product generation. The decision concept is explained by an automotive engineering example.