Green Product Design: A Review
Kaiqiang Zhang
Student Number: 2341816
E-mail:zkqfebron@gmail.com
Supervisor
dr. ir. M.W. (Michiel) Hillen
dr. K.R.E. (Eelko) Huizingh
MSc Business Administration – Strategic & Innovation Management
Faculty of Economics and Business
University of Groningen
August 2013
Acknowledgements
First of all, I want to express my great appreciation to my supervisor Michiel Hillen, who gave me bunches of tips and instructions when I was preparing my thesis. I could hardly finish this paper without his help. He guided me with great patience. He encouraged me when I was really frustrated and stressful. It is my great honor and pleasure to work with him.
Furthermore, my friends also gave me a lot of help and supports. Despite their busy daily schedule, they spared time to help me to structure the thesis and correct the grammar mistakes. They gave me constructive ideas to improve my thesis.
Finally, I want to express my gratitude to my parents who always trust me and encourage me to keep holding on. I love my parents so much.
Abstract
As the debate on environmental issues is getting fierce, sustainable development has become a hotly pursued trajectory for many firms. Green product tries to protect or enhance the environment, may be a way to realize sustainable development. Given the importance of design in the whole production process, it is important to investigate what do firms need to consider in green product design.
To answer this question, this research first investigates the product life cycle to find out the main differences between green product design and normal product design. A literature review is conducted to look into detail in each of phase of product life cycle to find out what should firms consider to develop green products. Then a generalized model is proposed and further research direction is discussed.
Key words: Sustainable development; green product design; product life cycle;
Content
1. Introduction ... 1
2. Theoretical background ... 4
2.1 Impact on environment ... 4
2.2 Changes are needed ... 6
3. Methodology ... 8
3.1 Choosing a methodology ... 8
3.2 Methodology Description ... 9
4. Data analysis and discussion ... 10
4.1 Material phase ... 12
4.1.1 LCE based methods ... 13
4.1.2 KBS based methods ... 17
4.2 Manufacturing phase ... 21
4.3 Packaging and distribution phase ... 23
4.4 Usage phase ... 27
4.5 End of Life ... 32
4.5.1 Differences between assembly and disassembly ... 34
4.5.2 Two dimensions of Design for Disassembly. ... 36
5. Conclusion ... 41
5.1 Results ... 41
5.2 Reflection ... 43
6. Contribution, limitation, and Further research ... 46
6.1 Main contribution ... 46
6.2 Limitation and Further research ... 47
1. Introduction
Nowadays, sustainable development has been a hotly pursued trajectory for many firms. Sustainable development refers to the fulfillment of human needs through simultaneous socioeconomic and technological progress and conservation of the earth’s natural systems (Sage, 1999). Many studies of natural resource capital suggest needs for environmental preservation and ecological health in order to provide the necessary natural resources base for the sustainable development (Sage, 1999). As a consequence, the notion “green product” has been raised recently. A Green product is
a product whose design and/or attributes (and/or production and/or strategy) use recycling (renewable/toxic-free/biodegradables) resources and which improves environmental impact or reduces environmental toxic damage throughout its entire life cycle (Durif, Boivin, & Julien, 2010, p. 27). Green product innovation has been
considered as one of the crucial factors to achieve growth, environmental sustainability, and a better quality of life (Dangelico & Pujari, 2010). As we may find in these two definitions, both of them highlighted the impact of socioeconomic and technological progress on the earth’s natural systems.
With the high growth rate of population and rapidly constrained natural resources, the planet and society all call for sustainable development to better use the already constrained resources or develop new resources.
Most of research on green products investigates the motivation of firms who want to develop green product and the benefits that the planet, society, and firm may obtain by developing green products. For instance, Dangelico and Pujari (2010) investigate why and how companies integrate environmental sustainability. They find out several motivations of firms for green product development, such as compliance with regulations and acquisition of reputation etc.
using the metaphor of nature, they claim that “waste equals food”. To make the product that once went to grave comes back to the cradle, to reproduce, reuse or disposal. It is a provoking and interesting concept. But is it really feasible? Some research is addressed in this issue. Reay et al (2011) conduct a research on the feasibility of the “Cradle-to-Cradle” design among scientists in New Zealand. There are indeed some doubts towards the concept among the scientists. But they do show that the general principles underpin “Cradle-to-Cradle” are important factors when attempting to address sustainability. Thus, although “Cradle-to-Cradle” maybe too idealistic, maybe the totally “green” product will never exit, it is still worthy to try on this trajectory since the participants responded positively to the intent of the “Cradle-to-Cradle” concept.
As a matter of fact, many firms have already implemented the “Cradle-to-Cradle” philosophy. In the booklet of companies of “Cradle-to-Cradle” Learning Community about their experiences and lessons learned (2011), 17 firms who already implemented “Cradle-to-Cradle” gather together to share their experiences in running this new development strategy. Take Desso, one of the 17 firms, as an example. Desso focuses primarily on superior floor design and Cradle to Cradle® in providing high quality carpet tiles and broadloom and further improve the health and well-being of customers (DESSO, 2013). They have already developed their own Take BackTM technology to receive used materials and recycle the materials. The participants unanimously concluded that: Cradle to Cradle pays off for profit, people and planet (Learning Community Cradle to Cradle, 2011, p.3). Thus, “Cradle-to-Cradle” innovation framework gives a general direction for creating a promising trajectory for green product development.
clear the necessities to develop green product. Thus, more research is needed in order to get a clear and detailed understanding for green product development.
Although much research has emphasized the importance of firms developing green products, little research is dedicated to what do firms need to develop green products. Basically, it is wise to investigate the product development process to find out what do firms need to develop green product. In their book “Product Design and Development”, Ulrich and Eppinger (2012) define a product development process is the sequence of steps or activities that an enterprise employs to conceive, design, and commercialize a product. They divide the process into six phases: Planning, Concept Development, System-Level Design, Detail Design, Testing and Refinement and Production Ramp-up (Ulrich & Eppinger, 2012). It is clear that the first four phases are all about product design. Obviously, a clear, detailed and holistic product design can shape the whole product development process and lead it to success. To green product, the design phase is essential as well. As being indicated in Hartmut Esslinger (2011)’s article, Designers, whose work forms the interface between humans and science, technology and business, have the obligation and opportunity to contribute to the sustainable development, and to be on the front lines of that effort (Esslinger, 2011).
2. Theoretical background
This section provides the theoretical background and motivation of this paper. First, the impact of industry on environment is discussed to show the importance of green product, and the concept “Cradle-to-Cradle” is discussed in order to give the readers a thorough insight into the concept. Then, based on impact on the environment and the concept “Cradle-to-Cradle”, I indicated that changes are needed to apply to, or even influence the current situation. Furthermore, the research question is proposed.
2.1 Impact on environment
In their book “Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things”, William McDonough and Michael Braungart (2002) have explained the concept “Cradle-to-Cradle” thoroughly. They first look back to the Industrial Revolution. As we all know, the Industrial Revolution dramatically improved the productivity of the old mode of production, which relied largely on the human labor force, and thus improved the overall living standard of all human beings. However, it also brought us many “byproducts”. As indicated in their book, the old mode of production
l puts billions of pounds of toxic material into the air, water, and soil every
year
l produces some materials so dangerous they will require constant vigilance by
future generations
l results in gigantic amounts of waste
l puts valuable materials in holes all over the planet, where they can never be
retrieved
l requires thousands of complex regulations – not to keep people and natural
systems safe, but rather to keep them from being poisoned too quickly
l measures productivity by how few people are working
l creates prosperity by digging up or cutting down natural resources and then
l erodes the diversity of species and cultural practices (McDonough & Braungart, 2002, p. 18).
I believe the industrialists, engineers, inventors, and other actors who were involved in the Industrial Revolution never meant to bring all these problems to their later generation. As indicated in the book, “The Industrial Revolutions was not
planned, but it was not without a motive” (McDonough & Braungart, 2002, p. 21).
The industrialists intended to achieve the greatest benefits for the largest number of people from smallest cost in the shortest time period.
However, the situation has changed now. As mentioned in the book, “early
industries relied on a seemingly endless supply of natural ‘capital’” (McDonough &
2.2 Changes are needed
The examples above emphasis the fact that the situation has changed a lot since the Industrial Revolution occurred. We need a new model of product development. Usually, the normal products are the ultimate products of an industrial system that is designed on a linear, one-way cradle-to-grave model. Resources are extracted, shaped into products, sold, and eventually disposed in a “grave” of some kind, usually a landfill or incinerator (McDonough & Braungart, 2002). Thus, the materials which can act as nutrient to another loop are wasted. “Cradle-to-Grave” design is the mainstream of modern manufacturing. According to some surveys, more than 90 percent of materials extracted to make durable goods in the United States become waste almost immediately (McDonough & Braungart, 2002). In order to encourage customers to get rid of the old thing and buy a new one, firms often design the products to last only for a certain period of time to stimulate the purchase behavior of customers. This also leads to the waste of materials, or as the authors referred as “nutrition”.
Actually, the industrialists realized all these effect and changes happened. As a consequence, the notion “eco-efficiency” is widely spread recently. Eco-efficiency strategies try to maintain or increase the value of economic output while simultaneously decrease the impact of economic activity upon ecological systems (Verfaillie & Bidwell, 2000). Eco-efficiency mainly aims at reducing the volume, velocity and toxicity of raw materials, but it only slows down the process of destruction brought by industry, allowing it to happen in a smaller amount over a longer time period. As claimed in their book, “being less bad is not good” (McDonough & Braungart, 2002, p. 45).
nutrition for the nature. The extra blossoms are not waste, they fall down to the ground to feed the organisms and microorganisms, which will produce nutrition for the earth. Then the earth will nourish the tree. This cyclical, cradle-to-cradle biological system has nourished a planet of thriving, diverse abundance for millions of years (McDonough & Braungart, 2002). The main idea of “Cradle-to-Cradle” is “waste equals food”. To make the product that once would go to grave come back to the cradle, to reproduce, reuse or disposal. By reducing or eliminating the environmental impact of industries, and utilizing the materials fully and thoroughly, we may realize sustainable development.
Consequently, to achieve “Cradle-to-Cradle”, it calls for a careful, thorough and foresighted initial product design. As Stegall (2006) indicated, poorly designed industrial systems, products, and buildings may impair the environment and society. By carefully designing the industrial systems or products, both the “technical nutrient”, which refers to those materials that can be reused in the next product development process, and the “biological nutrient”, which refers to the materials that can be consumed by microorganisms in the soil and by other animals, can be well utilized and made out of their best potential.
After realizing the urgency of the changes on product development, it is time to figure out how to make these changes. Thus, the research question of this thesis is
“what do firms need to consider in the design phase if they want to develop green products other than normal products?” To answer this question, the question below is
needed to be answered first: What are the major differences between green product
design and normal product design? Based on the differences that may exist between
3. Methodology
3.1 Choosing a methodology
In this paper, an analytical review is conducted. Usually, the review process contains of three parts: data collection, data analysis, and data synthesis.
Data collection. “Data can be collected in various ways: employing a panel of experts to identify relevant papers; using knowledge of the existing literature to select articles; and searching various databases using keywords” (Crossan & Apaydin,
2010, p. 1156). In this article, I used the second method – using knowledge of the existing literature. After review several papers on the domain, I used the references of these papers to find more relevant papers.
Data analysis. Once the articles are selected, the analysis can be conducted in
different ways depending on the objectives of the review. For instance, if a review intended to consolidate the results of multiple empirical studies may choose either qualitative or quantitative analysis of the results. The latter, in the form of meta-analysis, is considered a superior solution than the former (Hunter & Schmidt, 1990).
In this article, my goal is to comprehensively overview the relevant articles. Thus, the research in this article is a theoretical, rather than an empirical study. Therefore, I focus the literature research on the descriptive rather than statistical methods during the analysis of the articles. During this process, I grouped the literature through the main idea of them and summarized every article on the methodology they proposed to use in green product design.
Result analysis. After reviewing the articles we collected, I tried to generalize the
Overall, the methodology aims at a theoretical review of articles. It contains three logically consecutive parts: data collection, overall data analysis, and result analysis.
3.2 Methodology Description
As mentioned above, the review process contains three stages: data collection, data analysis, and result synthesis.
During the data collection stage, I first defined the objective of the research and identified the key data source. My objective is to review the theoretical content of each paper and build a conceptual framework of green product design.
Because of the course—Developing from Technology—I took during my master’s study, I gain some basic knowledge of sustainable development. And it also stimulated my interest in this topic. I got access to several papers that guided my master thesis research. Thus, I started the data collection based on this literature. I read the book “Cradle-to-Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things”, from which I got familiar with the concept of “Cradle-to-Cradle”. I read the article of Dangelico and Pujari (2010), which investigated the motivation of firms who wants to develop green products. Based on these, I furthered my research through searching via references, which is called “the snowball-method”: “a reference in one article points
to other articles; references in those articles point to an even wider set of articles; and so on. The set of relevant articles expands just like a snowball gets thicker and thicker” (Van Aken, Berends, & Van der Bij, 2010, p. 151-152).
4. Data analysis and discussion
In this section I will provide a descriptive analysis of the articles I collected. And I discussed each article and provided a preliminary conceptual map of the existing research.
As indicated in the theoretical background section, before answering the research question of this paper, it is reasonable to find out what are the differences between green product design and normal product design, that is the differences between “Cradle-to-Cradle” and “Cradle-to-Grave”. To solve this problem, it is reasonable to look into the product life cycle since it gives a clear picture on how things go back to “Cradle” after usage, as shown below.
Figure 1 Product life cycle. Source: (United Nation Enviornment Program, 2009)
However, there is a flaw in this figure. As argued in the introduction, design is the most essential part in new product development. Thus, it is above the product life cycle. This means when designing a new product, the product life cycle will be taken into account rather than just in the second phase as shown in Figure. Thus, I will take “design” out of the figure, as shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2 Revised product life cycle.
Usually, normal products offer broad functionality with high quality and a reasonable price. However, careful consideration and integration of environmental requirements are often neglected in early product development. All products have impact on environment more or less. These impacts arise through the entire lifecycle, from the materials acquisition stage to the disposal of products (Choi, Nies, & Ramani, 2008). Green products, by contrast, integrate the environmental consideration into the whole product life cycle and try to close the loop. Thus, the differences between the design of green product and normal product depend on whether it takes environmental consideration and requirements into account and tries to close the loop. I will discuss into detail in every phase of product life cycle in the following text.
4.1 Material phase
First, the beginning stage—material phase. There are already efforts paid in the selection of material. With the high pressure of social opinion, many firms already tried to avoid materials that are toxic to both environment and people. A good example would be the children toys. With the intense public concern on children safety, toy producers already avoided the toxic materials that may do harm to the children. However, this is not “green” enough. As argued earlier, green product design tries to close the loop of the product life cycle. With a carefully chosen material that is reusable or degradable, the material can flow in a circle that does no harm to the environment or customers’ health and well-being. Thus, the material selection plays a crucial role in making a difference between green product design and normal product design. As indicated by Esslinger (2011), designers have a unique opportunity to drive the development of sustainable products by virtue of our role in the early stages of the product lifecycle process.
Table 1 Articles analyzed in material selection
4.1.1 LCE based methods
LCE refers to “Engineering activities which include: the application of technological
and scientific principles to design and manufacture product, with the goal of protecting the environment and conserving resources, while encouraging economic process, keeping in mind the need for sustainability, and at the same time optimizing the product life cycle and minimizing pollution and waste” (Jeswiet, 2003, pp. 17).
Ermolaeva et al. (2004) show the application of the structural optimization system to the optimal choice of foams as a core material for sandwich panel to be used in the bottom structure of a concept car. In addition, the assessment of an environmental impact of potential materials during the entire life cycle of the structure was considered. The principle of this method is that the procedure is problem-dependent and is specific to each component (of group of structural component).
Article Main idea Group
Jeswiet (2003) Definition of life cycle engineering LCE Ermolaeva et al.
(2004) Multi-objective optimization for material selection LCE Giudice et al. (2005) Consider both economically and environmentally,
regarding the properties of materials and processes. LCE
Ribeiro et al. (2008)
Include the dimensions of technology, economy, environment and current practice in a single decision making tool to support materials selection.
LCE
Zarandi et al. (2011)
Proposed KBS to support preliminary filtering of alternatives through an environmental feasibility analysis.
KBS
Pilani et al. (2000)
Intelligent computer programs which simulate human decision-making ability though the use of a separate reasoning engine and a set of design rules stored in the knowledge base
KBS
Bamkin and Piearcey (1990)
“Design Assistant” program for the selection of
materials based on the knowledge-based systems. KBS
Amen and Vomacka (2001)
case-based reasoning (CBR) as a tool for material
Material and optimization problem are derived on the basis of performance targets, requirements of the standards and legislations, and external loads analysis. Then they took environmental impact into account by employing LCE. Therefore, this method employed a method for material selection. Because they believe the material selection here in this concept vehicle case is a multi-objective optimization, they use a compound objective function to help them make the decision. After that, they performed an environmental impact assessment of several alternatives using the LCA software SimaPro.
The multi-objective optimization method is widely used in the LCE method to make the decision on material selection. Among the articles I found, there are three articles that I found that are based on LCE, all the three articles I mention utilized this method.
While the former methods are limited to quantifying the environmental impact of the choice of materials on the basis of their environmental properties associated with the production phase, Giudice et al. (2005) propose selection procedure elaborates data on the conventional and environmental properties of materials and processes, relates this data to the performance required of the product components, and calculates the values assumed by functions which quantify the environmental impact over the life-cycle, and the cost resulting from the choice of materials.
The indicators are: the environmental impact of the material needed to produce the component, the impact associated with its manufacture, the impact related to the entire phase of use (which can depend on the choice of material), and the impact of the end-of-life. Furthermore, the economic cost related to the entire life cycle is calculated. The cost contains the cost of production and the cost of end-of-life; (3) the final phase is of analyzing the results and identifying the optimal choice, two simple but significant methods are proposed, the Graphic tools, which visualize the different fitness of each potential solution, and the Multi-objective analysis, which I have mentioned in the previous paragraph.
The proposed selection procedure elaborates data both economically and environmentally, regarding the properties of materials and processes. It relates the elaborated data to the performance requirements demanded by the product, and calculates the values assumed by functions that quantify the environmental impact over the entire life-cycle, including the end of life of the product, and the costs resulted from the choice of materials.
Ribeiro et al. (2008) propose a life cycle engineering approach in their paper aims to include the dimensions of technology, economy, environment and current practice in a single decision making tool to support materials selection. They also illustrate the best material choices for different scenarios, which are, for different practices and even corporate strategies, through “global evaluation” created by gathering information from different dimensions of analysis. In their article, they proposed a material selection method based on life-cycle engineering (LCE), which they defined as a decision making tool that considers performance, environmental, and cost dimensions throughout the life cycle of a product, guiding design engineers towards informed decisions (Ribeiro, Pecas, Silva, & Henriques, 2008).
evaluations are performed from a life cycle perspective, using life-cycle cost and life cycle assessment, respectively. Technical evaluation is performed using a conventional approach based on decision matrices, with the materials analyzed based on their properties. The final result is a “global evaluation”, presented in ternary diagram. It clearly shows the possible choices according to the importance given to the three dimensions of analysis. The ternary diagrams identify the best materials not only according to a set of weights attributed to technical, economic, and environmental dimensions, but also the domain (rage of weights) of each “best material”.
The “best material” is the result of the integrate evaluation from the performance data of the candidate materials over the three dimensions (technical, economical and environmental). The design team can select the “best material” according to their practice and corporate strategy.
Conclusion
There are more literatures dedicated to investigate the material selection methodology for green product design based on LCE. I found the general ideas of these methodologies are similar: (1) the whole process is similar. They all divided the process into stages: requirement analysis, performance (on every dimension) evaluation and result analysis to select the “best material”; (2) since they are all based on LCE, the methodologies they use come from the same source. For instance, Goedkoop et al. (2000) proposed the Eco-indicator 99 methodology for life cycle assessment, and multiple-objective methodology—which is a conventional methodology for material selection that I have explained in the earlier text.
more reasonable to make a preliminary filtering on the proposed materials and obtain a shorter list of candidate materials and then perform LCE on alternatives which are obtained from preliminary filtering (Zarandi, Mansour, Hosseinijou, & Avazbeigi, 2011).
4.1.2 KBS based methods
Another main stream is knowledge based systems (KBS) or expert systems for material selection. Knowledge based systems (KBS) are intelligent computer programs which simulate human decision-making ability though the use of a separate reasoning engine and a set of design rules stored in the knowledge base (Pilani, Narasimhan, Maiti, Singh, & Date, 2000). Pilani et al. (2000) also proposed a hybrid intelligent systems approach for die design of sheet metal manufacturing that incorporates rules for material selection.
Bamkin and Piearcey (1990) justified the development of a “Design Assistant” program for the selection of materials based on the knowledge-based systems. They developed a concept demonstrator of a knowledge-based material selector. Then they make final decision by a conventional algorithm that could choose a material for a component based on the barest minimum of properties. This algorithm would be embedded in knowledge based systems which would call upon a rulebase to ensure that no incompatible materials, or processes, were selected.
companies who have the experience of developing green product and decide to “do the best of old product knowledge without falling into unnecessary research”.
In their thesis, Zarandi et al. (2011) proposed KBS to support preliminary filtering of alternatives through an environmental feasibility analysis. They used the knowledge of experts in the field of eco-design, and translated the knowledge to decision rules. A decision tree is then developed to filter the alternatives. However, the selection of the suitable material is a difficult process that demands the management of a great amount of information of the materials properties, and there are often several solutions for a particular application. Each material has numerous characteristics such as mechanical, thermal, electrical, physical, environmental, economical, optical, and biological properties. However, it is a general knowledge that only a limited number of design engineers have a thorough knowledge on all these properties of a specific material. Therefore, the design engineer should be guided in selecting the most suitable material. Knowledge-based systems comprise expert knowledge capable of assisting the user in an interactive way to solve different problems and queries. The knowledge-based systems work in full interactive mode and provide impartial recommendations and are able to search large databases for optimum solutions.
They group the potential materials into three groups: very toxic and harmful, some toxic or harmful and not toxic or harmful—which is commonly known as the black list, gray list and black list. The main idea is never use black list, conditionally use gray list and white list. The “condition” is that the material can close the loop. For the gray list, When a material is necessary for the manufacturing process, if using a closed loop technology is possible, the material may be a good candidate, otherwise it is not considered as a good candidate. For white list, if the material has high-energy consumption and is not residual, retrieved, or scraped, they will avoid to use.
Figure 3: the structure of the KBS system proposed by Zarandi et al., (2011).
As shown in Figure 3, the first stage of the system is knowledge acquisition, from experts, checklists or design guidelines. Then the knowledge base is built. Among the candidate materials, the evaluation process will be conducted through the expert system.
Conclusion
In conclusion, KBS is rather a qualitative evaluation method for material selection. It is time-saving and economic compared with LCE based method. Given these advantages, KBS may be used as the preliminary filtering method that I mentioned in the conclusion of LCE section.
Conclusion
In the material phase, I found that the material selection is the main difference of green product design and normal product design. Though there are already efforts in reducing toxic material usage, there are still more criteria to follow in the selection of materials, e.g. reusable or degradable etc. After reviewing the relevant articles, I proposed a general method in material selection based on the tow main streams of material selection—LCE and KBS.
materials. And it is more quantitative. KBS or expert system is more qualitative. It is wise to make a preliminary filtering on the potential materials before conduct the LCE approach. Thus, it is reasonable for firms to adopt KBS or expert system to preliminary filter the proposed materials, then use LCE to make the best choice. However, these two parts are not completely separated. When firms are conducting LCE, they will probably use their expert and knowledge base that functioned in the preliminary filtering. Also, the preliminary filtering needs to consider the specific requirement of LCE. Thus, they are interrelated.
Thus, I combine the LCE based and KBS together and propose the material selection procedure, as shown in Figure 4.
(1) Requirement or guideline analysis. In this stage, firms need to investigate and figure out the base line that the product will perform in all dimensions: performance, environmental impact, and cost etc;
(2) Preliminary filtering. By using KBS or expert system, firms retrench the potential materials that will act as the input of next stage;
(3) In-depth evaluation. Firms evaluate the remaining materials from last stage in depth by LCE, and
(4) Result analysis and final choice. By analyzing the result of the evaluation of last stage, firms choose the “best material”。
4.2 Manufacturing phase
Secondly, the manufacturing phase, where the materials are processed and parts are assembled. Due to its highly dependent relationship with material selection, this phase is less significant than the material phase. The dependence may reflect on the production process. The production process may need details on the characteristics of the materials that were chosen. For example, the density, rigidity etc. are necessary to the selection on methodology used in fabrication.
Thus, I suppose that manufacturing phase has little influence on green product development. Things can be done in manufacturing process to minimize the impact on environment are reduce waste and energy consumption. Many researchers have investigated this domain. Lean production may be one of the effective ways to do so. The concept of lean product arose from the study of Japanese manufacturing techniques, particularly in the automobile industry (King & Lenox, 2001). Lean production is a tool for process improvement that aims at maximizing customer-defined value and minimizing waste (Puvanasvaran, Tian, Suresh, & Muhamad, 2012). The articles I analyzed are listed as follows.
Article Main idea
King and Lenox (2001)
Lean is “green”, lean production will make the manufacturing process “greener”
Puvanasvaran
et al. (2012)
Examine the characteristic of the lean principles in ISO 14001 and to propose linkage between lean principles and ISO 14001.
Miller et al.
(2010) Lean production transcends green manufacturing. Yung et al.
(2011)
A case study in applying LCA to a personal electronic product, with a focus on fulfilling the eco-design requirements.
Table 2 Articles analyzed in manufacturing phase.
environmental performance. Through their empirical study, they find that “lean is green”, because firms who implement lean production are more likely to reduce waste and treat pollution in the process rather than in the end-of-the-pipe. In addition, by reducing the marginal cost of pollution reduction, lean production will also reduce emission. Therefore, lean production will make the manufacturing process “greener”.
In the recent study, researchers also found interesting outcomes on the relationship of lean production and environmental performance of manufacturing process. Miller et al. (2010) find that lean production transcend sustainable manufacturing. They argue that firms who employ lean production may avoid unnecessary energy consumption by avoid over production or under production. The recycling project result from lean production will lead to the recycling of a significant amount of material. In addition, lean production will reduce waste by decreasing inventories and processing time as well as avoiding future redesigns due to over production or under production.
Either way, researchers all find that lean production has a positive effect on the environmental performance of manufacturing process. However, lean production is widely used nowadays in manufacturing process, no matter for green products or normal products. Thus, in the design of manufacturing, little difference is found because a strategy that focuses on reducing waste and energy usage will make manufacturing “greener”.
Conclusion
4.3 Packaging and distribution phase
Third, the packaging, transportation, and distribution phase, where the products are packaged and delivered. “The traditional physical functionality of packaging and
transport is to ensure that products arrive at their final destination complete and undamaged.” (Stevels, 2007, p. 55) Increasingly, the packaging also plays a role in
providing information of the products and emotional functionality, promoting the products or acting as a gurantee. However, most packaging products are single-uesd, once finished will turn to be waste, which in turn have a great impact on the environment, for instance, solid waste pollution, liquide and gaseous pollution, and the spread of bacteria and pests (Zhang & Zhao, 2011). Green produc design tries to minimize or eliminate the envrionmental impact of packaging.
Obviously, the most ideal packaging is without packaging, which will minimize the environmental impact of pakcaging to the maximun extent. As argued above, the function of packaging is to preserve the product from being demaged or deteriorated, and to deliver the information of the product. Thus, if the core product is tough enough to transport or do not need long distance transport, and the informantion of the product is well-known, packaging is no longer necessary. For instance, the daily necessities, such as vegetables, fruits etc., are so well-known to people，and easily produced and develierd to customers. These products do not necessarily need packaging. However, this situation only suits for few products.
To most of the products, it is wise to employ green packaging, which is the appropriate packaging that can be reused, recycled or degradation, corruption and does not cause pollution in humans and the environment during the product life cycle.
that I reviewed.
Article Main idea
Sustainable
Packaging Coalition (2011)
Definition of sustianable packaging Grönman et al.
(2012) A general framework for sustainable food packaging design Nordin and Selke
(2010)
Stimulate the understanding on the importance of the social dimension of pakcaging sustainability and its role in supporting the efforts to improve sustianability practice.
Buelow et al. (2010)
examined the extent to which customers in Melbourne understand recycling information on packaging labels and their resulting recycling behavior.
Peattie (2010)
The emerging picture of green consumption is of a process that is strongly influenced by consumer values, norms, and habits, yet is highly complex, diverse, and context dependent.
Table 3 Artilces reviewed in green packaging
A number of researchers have investigated the issue of green packaging, or sustainable packaging. In recent years, scholars have made several definitions of sustainable packaging. In 2005, the Sustainable Packaging Coalition (SPC) in the USA defined sustainable packaging as follows: sustainable packaging
l Is beneficial, safe and healthy throughout its life cycle; l Meets market criteria for performance and cost;
l Is based on renewable energy throughout its life cycle; l Optimizes the use of renewable and recycled materials;
l Is manufactured using clean production technologies and best practices; l Is made of materials healthy in all possible end-of-life scenarios;
l Is physically designed to optimize materials and energy;
l Is effectively recovered and utilized in biological and/or industrial closed
loop cycles (Sustainable Packaging Coalition, 2011).
study and LCA—into a thorough 6-step framework to help designers make better decision on sustainable food packaging. They propose that firms should combine the design of packaging with core product design so that they can get the optimistic product-packaging combination. After all, packaging serves for the core product. They propose a 6-step framework of packaging design:
1. Identify the minimum requirements of the product to be packed; 2. Choose possible materials or material combinations;
3. Preliminary design of all package level; 4. Identify and test functionality criteria; 5. Detailed design of packaging;
6. More detailed life-cycle assessment of the packaging alternatives.
As we may find out, the development of packaging follows also a process of product development. Thus the development of sustainable packaging has many things in common with green product development, for instance, choosing the optimistic, renewable or biological degradable materials, considering the whole life cycle of the package, reducing energy usage and controlling waste emission etc. Thus, I will not explain into detail the process of sustainable packaging.
However, these are the perspective of the production side. The consumption side is also essential in green packaging. That is the consumers’ attitudes and behavior towards sustainable packaging. Nordin and Selke (2010) have emphasized the importance of consumer input in maximizing sustainable package design and in improving overall sustainable packaging development system. Conventionally, people view packaging as one of the major contributors to solid waste. Moreover, consumers seldom notice the fundamental role of sustainable packaging in reducing spoilage of goods, thereby saving valuable resources and energy. In addition, it is also crucial for the consumers to know how to deal with the packaging in the end-of-life to achieve the recycling or disposal of sustainable packaging.
the packaging to realize its sustainability.
t is then reasonable to investigate means and strategies that may contribute to solve these problems. Information and labeling on packaging may have a contribution. As indicated by Nordin and Selke (2010), information on the packaging of sustainable product should not only highlight the role of the core product in helping consumers to be “green”, but also indicate the role of packaging in enhancing the products’ greenness and the role of packaging in the bigger picture of consumers’ lifestyle. Some research investigates the effectiveness of labeling in influencing the recycling behavior of consumers. Buelow et al. (2010) examined the extent to which customers in Melbourne understand recycling information on packaging labels and their resulting recycling behavior. They find that most of the participants claim that they “always” or “almost always” recycle packaging waste. While the exact amount of respondents who follow their stated actions, the research find the participants have a good knowledge on how to sort the packaging wastes appropriately. In addition, the most easily understood labels are action-oriented with information on exactly what to do. Thus, designers should better design the information on packaging. Other than the necessary information of functionality, instruction of usage and material statement
etc., more clear information on the importance of the sustainable packaging and
things-to-do for recycling or disposal need to be addressed.
After customers realize the importance of sustainable packaging and act “green”, it is necessary to design the recycling channel for sustainable packaging to facilitate the complementary recycling service. To be specific, firms can collaborate with government or distributors to offer the corresponding service of recycling, for instance, the sorting of disposable packaging or the collection of recyclable packaging.
purchase may be effective means to achieve this. But these are external encouragement; the more effective encouragement would be intrinsic. That is, design to influence the behavior of customers, which will be explained in the further text.
Conclusion
In packaging and transportation phase, I found the main difference between green product design and normal product design lies in the packaging. No significant differences are found in transportation because firms will reduce the environmental impact as long as they try to improve the transportation efficiency. Since the development of green packaging is similar to the development of green product, I mainly focus on the social aspect of packaging.
To be specific, it is obviously better to develop products without packaging, but the situation only suits for few products. To the most products, designer should design green packaging hand-in-hand with the design of the core product to optimize the product/packaging combination. Other than following the rules of the design of green product, the design of green packaging should also try to inform consumers with the importance of green packaging. In addition, designers should better use the information on the packaging to tell customers what to do with the packaging. Complementary services for recycling and effective motivation for customers are also necessary to better close the material loop of green packaging.
4.4 Usage phase
all design is, either consciously or unconsciously, a form of persuasive communication in which products serve as arguments for how people should live; and every new invention released to the public advocates accomplishing a certain task in a certain way:
“By presenting an audience of potential users with a new product—whether as simple as a plow or a new breed of hybrid seed corn, or as complex as an electric light bulb or a computer—designers have directly influenced the actions of individuals and communities, changed attitudes and values, and shaped society in surprisingly fundamental ways” (Buchanan, 1989, p. 6).
By influencing the sustainable behavior of customers, green product design may encourage the customers to use the product properly, which in turn will ensure the end-of-life of the product going smoothly. Thus, green product design can help reduce the potential environmental impact a product may bring or even lead a new sustainable lifestyle, which makes green product design different from normal. But it is not yet a necessity for green product design. That is, the conventional “environmental product” emphases more on the manufacturing side but seldom give attention to the usage of the product. Thus, design to influence customers’ behavior may act as a bonus for green product design. The articles I analyzed are listed in Table 4.
Article Main idea
Bhamra et al. (2008) How design can be used to changing consumer use behavior. Richard Buchanan
(1985)
Rhetoric is an art of shaping society, changing the course of individuals and communities, and setting patterns for new action. Stegall (2006)
Provides a general conceptual idea of design philosophy, which stresses the importance of the interaction between a product and its usage context to better influence customers’ sustainable behavior Lilley (2009) Tradeoff between effectiveness and acceptability
Table 4 Articles analyzed of design to influence customer behavior
determines the compound impacts (Bhamra, Lilley, & Tang, 2008). In his article, Richard Buchanan (1985) regards design as rhetoric. He claims that communication is usually considered to be the way a speaker discovers arguments and presents them in suitable words and gestures to persuade an audience. In fact, “the speaker” is trying to persuade audiences to adopt certain attitude or take certain actions. He argues that rhetoric is an art of shaping society, changing the course of individuals and communities, and setting patterns for new action. Furthermore, with the rise of technology, designers have directly influenced the actions of individuals and communities, the value that was widely accepted, and shaped society in fundamental way.
Thus, it is wise to take “the speaker” function of product design into account in designing green product. However, the current view of “design for environment” emphasis a product’s physical attributes. To achieve “Cradle-to-Cradle”, we need that every person who will use the “green product” in a “green manner”. As suggested by Stegall (2006), sustainability requires a redefinition, or specifically an extension, of current environmental design principles. It is time to develop a unifying ecological design philosophy that can guide deign decisions in order to ensure that new products combine materials and resources in the consideration of environmentally and beneficial ways while, at the same time, ensuring that the values and lifestyles communicated through product serve to promote a sustainable behavior, thus a ecologically sustainable society (Stegall, 2006). In his article, Stegall (2006) provides a general conceptual idea of design philosophy, which stresses the importance of the interaction between a product and its usage context to better influence customers’ sustainable behavior.
Eco-Information--design oriented education
To make consumers visible, understandable and accessible to inspire consumers to reflect upon their use of resources
Eco-Choice--design oriented empowerment
To encourage consumers to think about their use behavior and to take responsibility for their actions through providing consumers with options Eco-feedback--design oriented links to environmentally or socially responsible action
To inform users clearly about what they are doing and to facilitate consumers to make environmentally and socially responsible decisions through offering real-time feedback
Eco-spur--design oriented rewarding incentive and penalty
To inspire users to explore more sustainable usage through providing rewordings to "promote" good behavior or penalties to "punish" unsustainable usage
Eco-steer--design oriented affordances and constraints
To facilitate users to adopt more environmentally or socially desirable use habits through the prescriptions and/or constraints of use embedded in the product design
Eco-technical intervention--design oriented technical intervention
To restrain existing use habits and to persuade or control user behavior automatically by design combined with advanced technology
Clever design
To automatically act environmentally or socially without raising awareness or changing user behavior purely through innovative product design
Table 5 Design intervention strategies
They try to combine these strategies with behavioral change. Based on their research, they argue that there are three levels of design interventions in these seven strategies—guiding the change, maintaining the change and ensuring the change.
l Guiding the change. The first three strategies are rather informative, they provide tangible aural, visual, tactile symbols as reminders to inform the users, the users have the power to make the final decision whether to change the behavior or not.
product.
l Ensuring the change. The last two strategies sometimes ignore the knowledge or consent of users and use persuasive methods to change what people think or do. The decision power lies more on the product side.
They further their studies by conducting two case studies—reducing environmental impacts of household fridges and freezers, and changing social impacts of mobile phones.
The result of the research on household fridges and freezers provide an insight into the type of information required by designers to consider to integrate behavioral concerns into design practices. They stress the importance of intensive observation studies on the habits of users. Through the observation study, designer may find out the barriers that hinder the change of habits, and the chances that designers can take to revise the behavior of the customer, which may contribute to the choice of the design intervention strategies.
However, there is an issue on the tradeoff between effectiveness and acceptability of the intervention strategies. They furthered their research on the social impact of mobile phone. The case study is further elaborated by Lilley (2009). He conducts qualitative studies to gather the information of the habits of mobile phone users and the corresponding social impact of these habits. He furthers his study by conducting two pilot user research studies and a main user study. Through his research, he finds that there is a tradeoff between effectiveness and acceptability, which means some interventions may be effective, but not so acceptable to users. He claims that there is not yet a clear consensus of what is an acceptable level of intervention. Designers should further observe the use and misuse of product to find out the consequences of the product and choose the appropriate strategy correspondingly.
Conclusion
design to influence the behavior of customers, green product design can better realize the “greenness” of the product.
However, the design to shape users’ sustainable behavior is still a relatively underdeveloped research area and further research is needed with a wide range of different product types.
However, we can find the general procedure from the previous studies:
l First, firms should consider the goal of the design. That is, what is “the speaker” or the expecting behavior that the firm wants to address through the product design?
l Secondly, designers should thoroughly understand the habit of users and usage context, in order to find the potential chances of behavior change, for instance, the step of which designers can reduce the energy usage and waste generation. Observation studies and interviews may be applicable and effective ways to do so.
l Finally, based on the outcomes of these studies, decision makers can choose the design intervention strategy and combination of strategies correspondingly.
Moreover, the last two steps should act as a circle, which means designers should monitor of the intervention strategies the effect on changing customers’ behavior and modify the strategies accordingly. All these activities call for the collaboration of different areas, for instance, psychology, sociology, design science etc. This is rather a complex but interesting and promising area to further studies.
4.5 End of Life
It is where some materials may be recycled or incinerated, or some parts may be reused. It is crucial to disassemble these parts or materials from the used product. Thus, design for disassembly is critical in the end-of-life of a product. The “Design for disassembly” is one of the methods of Eco-Design methodologies: it tries to optimize the disassembly operations to which the product will be disassembled during its lifetime, in order to reduce maintenance costs or to allow cost-effective reuse, remanufacturing and recycling (Cappelli, Delogu, Pierini, & Schiavone, 2007). As mentioned above, to recycle or dispose the material, or to reuse the still-useful parts of the used product, a good design of disassembly is needed to ensure the ease of disassembly, and the quality of the materials and parts that are going back to “cradle” again at the end-of-life of the products. Although a wise choice of material is made, without a careful design of how to reuse these carefully chosen materials may make the prior effort in vain.
Plenty of researchers dived in this area in the recent decades. The articles I collected and analyzed are listed below.
Article Main idea
Boothroyd and
Alting (1992) Review of design for assembly and disassembly
Bogue (2007) Highlights the importance of design for disassembly concept and key DFD principles.
Tani and
GÜNER (1997) Autonomous disassembly system Brennan et al.
(1994)
Developing methodologies to address the operations and production planning and control issues associated with item segregation
Gungor & Gupta (1999)
Review of the state-of-the-art literature on environmentally conscious manufacturing and product recovery
Pigosso et al. (2010)
Presents some eco-design methods focused on the integration of different ‘end-of-life’ strategies, with special attention to remanufacturing
Bhamra T. (1997)
Planning and optimization to facilitate disassembly in a recycling oriented manufacturing system
de Ron and Penev (1995)
Used theory of graphs to represent the possible stages of the disassembly process and alternative disassembly strategies for every sub-assembly
(1996) in leveling.
Zussman et al. (1994)
Proposed a more systematic and specific strategy, which is based on the assessment of both disassembly operations and component values, for design for disassembly
Lambert (1997) A method for determining the optimum disassembly sequence for selective disassembly of discarded complex products
Veerakamolmal
et al. (1997) Graphical approach to achieve an efficient disassembly process plan
Arai and Iwata (1993)
An evaluation method for the ease of assembly/disassembly based on the kinematic simulation
Veerakamolmal and Gupta
(2002)
Procedures to initialize a case memory for different product platforms, and to operate a CBR system, which can be used to plan disassembly processes.
Table 6 Articles analyzed in design for disassembly
4.5.1 Differences between assembly and disassembly
When considering design for disassembly, it is reasonable to take a look at design for assembly, which is how to design every single part of the product and the process to wrap them up together. That’s the terms “part design” and “assembly design”. As argued by Boothroyd and Alting (1992), to some individuals, “assembly” means the fitting together or joining of separate components or parts, in other word, the “adding” of a part to a partially complete product. However, before the part can be added or “inserted” it must often be separated from other parts, grasped, oriented and moved to the product. The design for assembly aims to reduce assembly cost and reduce the total cost. It is driven mainly by economic considerations and allows the design of products that can be manufactured at a minimum cost and with maximum quality and reliability (Bogue, 2007). In this point, both normal product and green product share the same philosophy. They all try to reduce cost, and maintain or improve the quality and reliability.
this article, one of the major problems is the end-of-life option of products. Traditionally, the value still contained in consumer products at their end-of-life has not been recovered to the full extent. The products have, at best, been shredded, allowing to regain the value of some useful parts that can act as “technical nutrients”, while having to dispose the rest that can act as “biological nutrients”. Both the lack of natural resources, raw materials and energy, and the shortage of landfill or waste burning capacities force the industry to consider ways to increase the amount of components and materials that can be reused for a “second life”. Recycling aims at “closing the loop” of materials and components after usage by reusing them for new products. Even though firms realize the importance of recycling nowadays, huge amounts of solid waste are disposed in landfills creating serious pollution and occupational problems and it is an unacceptable waste of valuable resources.
Even though approaching disassembly as the reverse of assembly may sound reasonable, for complex products, the operational characteristics of disassembly and assembly are quite different. Tani and GÜNER (1997) compare assembly and disassembly and describe the identifiers of the disassembly process. According to their observations, “firms can perform disassembly of a product by finding natural and easier ways whereas they must highly optimize the process needed and clearly define the sequences of parts to form a product in assembly.” Although the actual mechanism of disassembly is easier than that of assembly, the operational scope of disassembly is much more complicated than assembly (Gungor & Gupta, 1999). The general operational characteristics of disassembly and assembly systems are highlighted by Brennan et al. (1994) and given in Table 3.
System characteristics Assembly Disassembly
Demand dependent dependent
Demand sources single end item multiple Forecasting requirements single end item multi-item Planning horizon product life-cycle indefinite
Manufacturing system dynamic and constrained dynamic and constrained Operations complexity moderate high
Flow process convergent divergent
Direction of material flow Forward reverse
Inventory by-products None potentially numerous Availability of scheduling tools numerous none
Table 3: Comparison of assembly and disassembly. Source: (Brennan, Gupta, & Taleb, 1994)
Both operational and physical differences between assembly and disassembly indicated that the methods or knowledge used in assembly may not fit in the process of disassembly. However, disassembly planning is a key link between a product’s end-of-life and the recovery alternatives in the products’ life cycle. The main goal of disassembly is to separate specific parts of products that will make the recovery and recycling processes faster and more efficient (Pigosso D. C., Zanette, Filho, Ometto, & Rozenfeld, 2010). Thus, it is highly related with green product design. Particularly, rules and guidelines for product design for ease of disassembly must be developed.
Generally, there are two dimensions that literature on disassembly covered: (1) research related to identifying the extent to which disassembly of a product should be performed (the level of disassembly), and (2) research focusing on disassembly process planning.
4.5.2 Two dimensions of Design for Disassembly.
Disassembly leveling problem
resources invested in the disassembly process and the return realized from it (Bhamra T. , 1997).
To reach such balance, cost analysis is usually used. For example, de Ron and Penev (1995) used theory of graphs to represent the possible stages of the disassembly process and alternative disassembly strategies for every sub-assembly. They further divided the term “disassembly” into several sub-processes: service, disassembly, dismantling, recycling, and disposal. Each of these processes represents a different disassembly level, which depends upon the following economic considerations: (1) the value added to products and materials, (2) the disassembly cost per operation, (3) the revenue per operation, and (4) the penalty if poisonous materials are not completely removed. Then the cost research method is used to evaluate the leveling of disassembly.
When design for disassembly (DFD) is considered it must fulfill the requirements of production, distribution, usage sufficient to consider recycling alone as the goal, and all the phase must be considered all together (Boothroyd & Alting, 1992). Thus life-cycle design should act as the framework of DFD. As argued by Boothroyd and Alting (1992), if the designer is able to estimate the cost for the user and society, he will be able to modify his design accordingly. Based on a life-cycle cost model he will also be able to predict the results of the DFD method because DFD will reduce the cost for the user and society due to the improvement of environment, occupational health and resource utilization.
In their article, Harjula et al (1996) proposed factors that should be considered in the design of products for ease of disassembly are: (1) the financial aspects, including costs of the disassembly process, the cost of item reuse and the recycling costs of disposal; and (2) environmental impact. In their research, procedures for product evaluation taking into account these factors have been investigated together with the manipulation of the disassembly sequence for cost optimization. For environmental considerations, a method takes into accounts the effects of Materials, Energy and Toxicity (MET) on the environment.
based on the assessment of both disassembly operations and component values, for design for disassembly. The strategy contains three stages: (1) generation of all process combinations. (2) Evaluation of processed and regainable values. In this stage, the recycling value of all components and the efforts for all disassembly operations are calculated together. (3) Identification of optimal path. In this stage, the optimal end-of-life option for every component is chosen. They used “Recovery Graph” to calculate the values of each node. By doing so, they avoid the numerous work due to the combinatorial nature of the generation of the components. Instead, each node and hyperarc of the Recovery Graph is evaluated only once.
Conclusion
In general, the disassembly leveling problem is trying to reach a balance between the input to the disassembly process and the output of the disassembly process, both economically and environmentally. The methods may diverse, but the main idea remains congruent. Firms need to adjust the methods by carefully evaluating the strategy they intended to take and make the optimal decision on the disassembly level they will reach.
Disassembly process planning.
Another important dimension of disassembly is to find efficient disassembly process plans. A disassembly process plan is a sequence of disassembly steps which begins with a product to be disassembled and ends in a state where all of the parts of interest are disconnected (thus it could be either partial or complete disassembly) (Gungor & Gupta, 1999). According to Gungor and Gupta (1999), the objective of disassembly process planning is to find optimal or near-optimal DPPs, which minimizes the cost of disassembly (assuming that a certain level of disassembly is required) or obtains the best cost/benefit ratio for disassembly. There are several generally used methods I discovered from the articles I found: geometric relationship, simulation, and
case-based reasoning.
