Page 96 - Design for Environment A Guide to Sustainable Product Development

Managing Envir onmental Innovation 75

Once DFE becomes an integral part of the product development
process, it will reveal new opportunities for companies to reduce
life-cycle costs and improve overall product quality and profitability,
while helping to assure that they are meeting their sustainability
commitments.
The organizational strategy for pursuing the above steps need
not involve establishing a whole new bureaucracy to enforce the
practice of DFE. On the contrary, many leading companies with effec-
tive DFE programs, such as Intel and DuPont, utilize a small corpo-
rate staff group of specialists who provide support to cross-functional
teams. The driving force for adoption of DFE goals and practices typ-
ically flows down from line management, while the core sustain-
ability teams act as change agents throughout the business units,
meeting with leaders of business and functional groups to set strategy
and coordinate implementation.

Practicing Concurrent Engineering
As described above, concurrent engineering is at the heart of IPD,
and involves simultaneous consideration of manufacturability, reli-
ability, and many other “ilities.” (The corresponding design disci-
plines are sometimes described as “Design for X,” or DFX.) There are
three essential elements of any concurrent engineering discipline:

1. Indicators and metrics, which reflect fundamental customer
needs or corporate priorities and provide the basis for estab-
lishing product objectives and measuring performance.
2. Design rules and guidelines, which are based on an in-depth
understanding of relevant technologies and supported by
accepted engineering practices.
3. Analysis methods, which enable engineers to assess pro-
posed designs with respect to the above metrics and to ana-
lyze cost and quality trade-offs.
For example, consider the design process for printed circuit boards,
which has become highly systematized in order to enable rapid time
to market. Among the many “ilities” addressed in this field is Design
for Reliability (DFR). Table 5.1 illustrates the above three elements for
both DFR and DFE. Chapters 6 through 9 provide a thorough dis -
cussion of these three main elements in the context of DFE—envi -
ronmental performance indicators and metrics, DFE guidelines, and
environmental analysis methods.
Figure 5.1 illustrates how the elements of concurrent engineer-
ing are deployed to support achievement of rapid cycle time by an
integrated product development team. These are usually deployed
as part of an iterative stage-gate process that begins with the analy-
sis of customer needs and the establishment of product re quirements