Page 93 - Design for Environment A Guide to Sustainable Product Development

72 Chapter Five

the wall” to the next group. Instead, companies that have adopted
IPD use the approach of “concurrent engineering” or simultaneous
engineering, in which the different engineering disciplines work in
a parallel, coordinated fashion to address life-cycle requirements.
Examples of these disciplines include quality, manufacturability,
reliability, maintainability, safety, and the newest member—environ-
mental sustainability.
The motivation for IPD is extremely strong when one considers
the economics of product development. For example, in the automo-
tive and electronics industries, up to 80% of product life-cycle costs
are committed during the concept and preliminary design stages,
and the cost of design changes increases steeply as a product pro-
ceeds into full scale development and prototyping. The implication
is that product developers should use concurrent engineering to
examine a design from multiple perspectives and to anticipate
poten tial problems or opportunities. By getting it right the first time,
they will avoid costly changes and delays due to design iterations.
Another advantage of IPD is that it helps to speed time to market, i.e.,
the time interval between the launch of a new product development
effort and the market introduction of the product. It is well known
that early market entry tends to increase ultimate market share.
One of the most challenging aspects of IPD is the “fuzzy front
end” of the process, where a wide variety of ideas are screened, initial
concepts are formulated and evaluated, and decisions are made as to
whether to move these concepts into a more structured development
process [5]. This phase often involves major commitments of time
and money, and determines the essential features of the ultimate
product. Therefore, it is imperative that professionals with an under-
standing of environmental engineering and design issues be involved
in the fuzzy front end. Too often companies fall into the trap of treat-
ing environmental issues as an afterthought to be addressed once the
product concept is established. In an age of environmental aware-
ness, breakthrough products that are “game-changers” may likely be
based on transformative environmental technologies. That is why
3M, among others, has adopted a disciplined life-cycle management
approach that includes DFE as a mandatory part of new product
development (see Chapter 10).

Organizing for Environmental Excellence
Enterprise integration, as described in Chapter 1, encourages effec-
tive teamwork and coordination between marketing, engineering,
and manufacturing groups. In this context, IPD can be seen as a strat-
egy for agile product development, enabling companies to release
higher-quality products while reducing time to market. With the
growing emphasis on environmental performance as an important