Economic and Environmental Evaluation of Product Life Cycle Design

Abstract

It has become evident that our current way of living must change to mitigate the damage done to our environment and preserve the non-renewable resources to ensure future generations’ survival. From product development perspective, the manufacturing industry must change current way of production to reduce resource consumption and environmental impact in the society. However, existing approaches to product life cycle design assessment – which is based on functional unit definition in Life cycle assessment – is limited to product-focused evaluation that fails to consider new technologies entering the market. In addition, product assessments are performed without determining the impact of total volume which ignores the growing market size due to population increase. This has led to overall increase of environmental impact in society despite the improvements made at product level. Therefore, this thesis developed a new methodology to assess the economic and environmental impacts of product life cycle design by considering the range of functionality offered as a result of new technologies. The issue of increasing population was also considered by incorporating the assessment of product volume that is supplied in a range of specifications according to the functionality. Using Axiomatic Design Theory in mapping the functional requirements and determining the economic and environmental impacts according to each function, a better visibility on these impacts was realised. Assessments of changes to the functionality and associated impacts due to technology changes were improved and by determining the total impacts at volume level, the actual impact of products in society was determined. Through volume forecasting using growth curve (in the form of Standard Logistics Function), predictive assessment of total environmental impact of emerging technologies has been achieved. Research findings show that further improvements are required at product level in order to cater for increases in volume of next generation products. Hence, a strategic development plan is needed for a more environmentally sustainable product development which is economically feasible for a manufacturer.