Page 113 - Design for Environment A Guide to Sustainable Product Development

92 Cha pte r Six

Analysis Methods
DFE Principle 5. Use analysis methods to evaluate design
performance and trade-offs.
Develop and apply rigorous quantitative tools to analyze the environmental,
economic, and other consequences of design decisions and to weigh the trade-
offs of alternative choices. Every product requirement must have a cor-
responding verification method, whether through physical tests or
numerical calculations. Design teams will systematically apply these
methods to assess the acceptability of a design and the degree of
improvement expected with respect to product cost, quality, environ-
mental performance, and other metrics of interest. During the prod-
uct development cycle described in Chapter 5, analysis methods are
needed for a number of different purposes:

• Screening methods are used to narrow design choices among
a set of alternatives. These can range from material checklists
to life-cycle environmental footprint indicators.
• Performance assessment methods are used to estimate the
expected performance of designs with respect to particular
indicators. These include risk assessment, life-cycle assess-
ment, and life-cycle cost accounting.
• Trade-off analysis methods are used to compare the expected
cost and performance of several alternative design approaches.
These can range from scoring matrices to quantitative cost-
benefit analysis.
As described in Chapter 9, there are a variety of techniques and
tools available to support the above needs, including tangible evalu-
ation, qualitative assessment, quantitative environmental analysis,
risk analysis, and financial analysis. Some of these techniques are
very simple, while others may require the use of sophisticated com-
puter-based models.

Information Technology
DFE Principle 6. Provide software capabilities to facilitate
the application of DFE practices.
Enable the systematic practice of DFE by integrating the relevant metrics,
guidelines, and analysis methods into the computing environment that is
routinely used by design teams. As mentioned in Chapter 5, concurrent
engineering teams can benefit from an integrated software environ-
ment. The information technology infrastructure for product develop-
ment has advanced rapidly, and sophisticated commercial tools are
available for key tasks, such as requirements management, product
data management, computer-aided engineering and design (CAE/