Fraunhofer-Institut für Produktionsanlagen und Konstruktionstechnik IPK

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Benefits and obstacles of sustainable product development methods

2017 , Stark, R. , Buchert, T. , Neugebauer, S. , Bonvoisin, J. , Finkbeiner, M.

In the last few years, numerous approaches have been introduced for supporting design engineers in developing more sustainable products. However, so far, these efforts have not led to the establishment of a commonly acknowledged standard methodology for Sustainable Product Development (SPD). This brings into question the relevance of developing new methods and calls for more efforts in testing the available ones. This article provides a reflection about the benefits and obstacles of applying existing SPD approaches to a real product development project. It reports the results of a project aimed at developing a new mobility solution under the constraints of sustainability-related targets. This project has led to the development of a new pedelec concept, focusing on the substitution of small passenger cars with the help of three SPD methods - Design for Sustainability Guidelines, Product Sustainability Index, and Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment. These methods have proved to be generally beneficial, thanks to a combination of qualitative and quantitative perspectives. However, the multitude of criteria offered by the methods put forth difficulties in evaluating which sustainability aspects are relevant and therefore lead to higher effort for information retrieval analysis and decision processes. Furthermore, the methods still lack an integrated perspective on the product, the corresponding services and the overarching system.

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Design and manufacturing of a sustainable pedelec

2015 , Buchert, T. , Steingrimsson, J.G. , Neugebauer, S. , Nguyen, T.D. , Galeitzke, M. , Oertwig, N. , Seidel, J. , McFarland, R. , Lindow, K. , Hayka, H. , Stark, R.

To facilitate the transition towards sustainable manufacturing, current practices and mechanisms for value creation need to be reconsidered along the whole product lifecycle. However, academic research on sustainability is still bound to narrow fields of applications. In this study, a multi-disciplinary research project is presented that focuses on the development of a sustainable pedal electric cycle (Pedelec) from a first idea to a ready-to-use prototype. The results of the project show how different scientific approaches for bottom-up improvement can be applied together in a concrete case. A holistic view on the product lifecycle proved as a meaningful framework for that purpose.

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A systematic literature review on modular product design

2016 , Bonvoisin, J. , Halstenberg, F. , Buchert, T. , Stark, R.

The product architecture has a significant influence on all phases of the product life cycle. Many literature sources claim modular product design offers a large range of advantages for addressing this influence. For example, it enables mass customisation, allows environmentally friendly end-of-life strategies, reduces development costs and allows efficient work in loosely coupled organisations. However, the generally low level of justification of these advantages together with the lack of commonly accepted theoretical references leads to a rather scattered view of the potential of modularisation. Moreover, the diversity of methodological approaches and the lack of common vocabulary represent a challenge for standardisation of practices and may hinder systematic implementation in product development. In particular, more guidance may be required to allow product development teams to choose the right modularisation approach that fits in with their objectives. This article summarises published literature in order to introduce a common language in the field of product modularisation and to build the theoretical basis of a multi-purpose approach - termed 'modularization for X'. It is based on a systematic literature review covering a corpus of 163 publications, provides a structured compilation of drivers, design principles and metrics for modularisation, and identifies challenges for further research efforts.

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Multi-criteria decision making as a tool for sustainable product development: Benefits and obstacles

2015 , Buchert, T. , Neugebauer, S. , Schenker, S. , Lindow, K. , Stark, R.

For developing sustainable products design engineers need to foresee diverse interrelations between a product's characteristics and its economic, social and environmental impacts. In order to support this complex task a wide range of design methods has been developed. Retrospective analytical methods like Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment (LCSA) require a large amount of information and are thus utilized when important design decisions are already made. Prospective methods are rather generic (e.g. checklists) and too broad to be helpful in concrete design decisions. In this paper, the integration of discrete decision trees with LCSA is proposed for shifting multi-criterial quantitative analysis to earlier development. On the basis of sustainability indicators Pareto-optimal decision-paths for given material- and process alternatives along the product lifecycle can be compared up-front. Resulting benefits and obstacles are illustrated by evaluating value creation options of a bicycle frame.

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Target-oriented modularization - Addressing sustainability design goals in product modularization

2015 , Halstenberg, F.A. , Buchert, T. , Bonvoisin, J. , Lindow, K. , Stark, R.

Through modularization, a large range of sustainability goals can be addressed in design, e.g. environmentally friendly end-of-life or improved MRO (maintenance, repair and overhaul) processes. The development of methods for product modularization raised increasing interest in recent years. However, published methods for product modularization still lack of flexibility and standardization. Numerous methods have been developed that are defined for one or a given list of design goals. As a result, it is still difficult for engineers to find and apply the right method for a defined set of design goals. In this paper, the field of modular product design methods has been analyzed with the aim to develop a Target-oriented Modularization Method that allows defining modular product structure according to user-defined design goals. The introduced method is demonstrated on the example of a Garrett GT2860R turbocharger.

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