Use of dfe methodologies and tools - Major barriers and challenges

Abstract

Products make substantial impact on environment. Product to waste mass generated through out the product lifecycle can be as high as 1:20. Design for Environment (DfE) is an approach to design where all the environmental impacts of a product are considered over the entire life cycle of a product. Early stages of product development are the key for this because if we know the environmental impacts of potential designs while designing, we can make changes to these designs then and there so as to reduce their environmental impacts [1, 2]. However, unlike cost and performance, use of environmental criteria and DfE is far from part of mainstream designing [3]. Most DfE tools are conceptual in nature, and there is very little adoption of these in industry. Methods like [4] are useful for specific phases of the lifecycle of a product. However, during product development there is a need to consider the whole lifecycle rather than a single phase of the product