A framework for the sustainability evaluation of product configuration design
Sustainable development has taken its place in product design as something that needs to be achieved nowadays, not only to generate profits, meet consumers' needs, and reduce adverse impacts on the environment, but in consideration of all economic, societal, and environmental aspects, known as...
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| Format: | Thesis |
| Published: |
2014
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://eprints.uthm.edu.my/7891/ http://eprints.uthm.edu.my/7891/1/mohd_fahrul_hassan.pdf |
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| Summary: | Sustainable development has taken its place in product design as something
that needs to be achieved nowadays, not only to generate profits, meet consumers'
needs, and reduce adverse impacts on the environment, but in consideration of all
economic, societal, and environmental aspects, known as the triple bottom line
(TBL), over the entire product life cycle. Numerous approaches to sustainable
product design have been introduced by integrating sustainability considerations
during the preliminary design phase. However, most of them neglect either one of the
TBL aspects, do not cover the entire product life cycle, and have difficulty in
selecting the best design alternative. Additionally, none of them consider
sustainability evaluation as one of the criteria in the configuration design phase. In
this study, a framework for selecting the most sustainable alternative configuration
designs of a part is proposed to assist product designers in decision-making. The
proposed framework has been basically developed in two main phases, the first of
which presents a new decision tool named the Product Sustainability Evaluation Tool
(ProSET) to support the proposed framework, and the second phase encompasses the
configuration design process. ProSET provides an indicator called the Weighted
Sustainability Score (WSS) for each evaluated alternative configuration design of a
part to allow for a quick response and time saving during decision-making process.
The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Artificial Neural Network (ANN) are
applied in ProSET to provide weighting factors and estimate the WSS. Several case
studies are conducted involving discrete products to comprehensively demonstrate
the application of the proposed framework. Based on the results of sustainability
performance evaluation by ProSET of an armchair, the alternative part with the
highest WSS among its competitors for each basic element of the armchair has been
selected to be a complete product. The results are also compared with commercial
software to validate the accuracy of the analysis. From the comparison, it is
surnmarised that both results show a degree of similarity in order to efficiently select
the best alternative part configuration design with regard to environmental
considerations. Hence, it is suggested that the proposed framework and the capability
of ProSET can be easily adopted into the working environment of product designers. |
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