Page 141 - Design for Environment A Guide to Sustainable Product Development

120 Cha pte r Ei g h t

There are obviously a broad range of guidelines and practices
that can be considered within these DFE disciplines. However, to be
truly useful to a particular company and product team, these types
of guidelines should be converted from the general statements
listed here to more specific approaches that are applicable to a par-
ticular industry, enterprise, and product category. There are several
points to note about this catalogue of guidelines:
• The list is by no means exhaustive. Although it covers a
majority of common industrial practices, new approaches are
constantly being devised.
• The classification into four disciplines is not necessarily the
only way to organize these guidelines. Any hierarchical scheme
must recognize that many of the DFE practices are inter-
related, as shown in Figure 8.2.
• Each DFE guideline may have beneficial impacts in one or
more stages of the product life cycle, as illustrated in Table 8.1.
• There is considerable overlap with other DFX disciplines
such as Design for Manufacture and Assembly. Indeed, one
strength of DFE is its synergy with other design disciplines.
For example, reducing design complexity leads to fewer
parts, lower assembly costs, and easier disassembly, result-
ing in reduced energy and material use as well as increased
recyclability.

FIGURE 8.2 Interrelationships among DFE practices.