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Product design plays a key role in supporting the principles of circular economy and sustainability by improving the repair and disassembly capabilities of products. The EN4555X standard series provides a framework and a set of indicators to evaluate these aspects for energy-related products. This paper focuses on applying the RSS (Repair Scoring System) introduced by the EN45554 standard to kitchen ventilation systems (T-shape cooker hood models). The study investigates the reliability of the repairability index by examining the impact of assumptions made during its assessment, particularly focusing on the data and parameters used for calculations. The methodology involves four key steps: identification of index parameters, experimental analysis, sensitivity analysis (SA) through data variation, and result interpretation. The experimental analysis involves computing the RSS index for the chosen range hoods, encompassing a SA developed by varying index's parameters. Results illustrate that introducing consistent parameter variations across models leads to changes in the Disassemblability Index. However, these alterations remain consistent across all cases, preserving the overall product ranking. Nonetheless, the study also indicates that altering parameter weights may lead to changes in product rankings within the repairability score. This highlights the importance of employing uniform weights within the same product category. In conclusion, this study underscores the importance of employing consistent methodologies and weights to uphold the reliability of repairability indexes when assessing product repairability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the drive towards sustainable design, the push for products with greater longevity, reparability, and recyclability has never been more crucial. Central to this is the integration of eco-design principles within manufacturing processes. However, there is a gap: manufacturers lack both standardized processes and digital tools to support them, even though the promising digital product passport largely focuses on product lifespan. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are paramount, serving as benchmarks for both the manufacturing process and environmental sustainability of a product. These KPIs encompass factors like energy, water, compressed air, and material resource consumption. To emphasize the importance of these metrics, Europe is vulnerable to supply disruptions due to its high dependence on raw materials from non-EU countries. This paper discusses the state of the art of digital twins and presents a digital shadow—a comprehensive digital tool design to support manufacturers during the product design phase. Drawing from a case study in the automotive sector, this tool not only aligns with recycling and sustainability objectives but also mitigates risks associated with raw material dependencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The electrification of vehicles is seen nowadays as a promising way to decarbonize the personal transportation. The assessment of environmental impacts of electric batteries is usually case-specific due to the complex modelling of such systems which present a large variability in designs, in user behavior or in geographic use conditions. A typical example is the battery lifespan which is arbitrarily chosen in most cases, even though it has a decisive influence on lifecycle emissions. Computing the battery lifespan in addition to a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) would enable to highlight new hotspots and new parameters to reduce the environmental impacts of batteries. This paper introduces a new approach, based on a LCA conducted with the open-source software Brightway and built on primary data collected from a complete disassembly of a commercial electric vehicle. An original functional unit has been proposed that better represents the service offered by the battery over its lifetime and a semi-empirical ageing model has been integrated to predict more precisely the battery lifespan depending on design parameters and the use conditions. This innovative methodology is easily parameterized and aims to compare several eco-design strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Refrigeration is used in several sectors: starting from large-scale distribution to the medical industry. It is responsible for about 17% of total electricity consumption and around 8% of greenhouse gas emissions. Environmental performances analysis of refrigeration machines thus represents a significant step towards emissions reduction related to their use. This paper shows a comparative life cycle assessment among three refrigeration systems: the first one operating with a traditional refrigerant, the latter with a natural one. The analysis was performed following the international standards ISO 14040/14044. The functional unit was: 'the storage of food at 0°C, for a lifetime of 10 years in cold rooms of a supermarket. The aim was to define useful ecodesign rules applicable during the design phase; this represents a starting point for a constant improvement of company products. The results highlight how the use phase weights the most on the environment: it represents about 99% of the whole life cycle impact in the climate change indicator. The new design machine with natural fluid, proves to be the most eco-friendly; on the other hand, the one operating with a traditional refrigerant is the most impactful in each phase of the life cycle, due to both its higher power consumption and weight. Based on results, company strategies are drawn up to optimise refrigeration systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Battery electric vehicles (BEVs) represent a promising solution to mitigate carbon emissions by road transportation. However, life cycle assessment (LCA) studies on BEVs have demonstrated that batteries are responsible for around 30% of the vehicle's environmental impacts. Therefore, the integration of circular economy (CE) criteria in battery design and life cycle management is key to improve resource efficiency and environmental sustainability. Nevertheless, literature analysing the implementation of CE design criteria in BEVs´ battery development is scarce. Focusing on Li-ion batteries (LIB) for BEVs, this paper examines the potential for implementation of life cycle-based CE design criteria. Accordingly, a CE design assessment tool, including a list of 53 relevant design criteria gathered from the literature, industrial practice and EU legislation, with application to BEVs´ batteries, was shared with industrial stakeholders from the H2020 LIBERTY project (LC-BAT-10-2020 No. 963522) to receive feedback. The industrial stakeholders were asked to evaluate the potential implementation of each CE design criteria based on the relationship between importance and viability by providing scores from 0% to 94%.The results indicate that the most important CE design criteria are related to the manufacturing stage of LIBs, including innovations oriented to increase the performance and quality of the final product by anticipating to new legislation requirements, including resource and environmental aspects, for BEVs. On the other hand, design criteria related to the end of life (EOL) management of LIBs show low implementation potential due to low viability scores. The benefits of considering CE design criteria in LIB development are discussed as well as the potential trade-offs in order to support well-informed decision-making. This includes an analysis of the causes for the low score for some CE design criteria and the opportunities to improve their implementation potential to increase the resource efficiency and environmental performance of BEVs´ LIBs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reducing the ecological footprint of the machine tool is one of the great challenges in terms of the global sustainable development goals. Eco-design of the machine tool is now regarded as one of the effective methods to reduce the environmental pollution from the source. This paper proposes an ecological sensitivity analysis method enabling ranking of the alternative eco-design measures in a time efficient way regarding the life-cycle environmental impact to support eco-design decision making of machine tool. Based on the presented frameworks and procedures, the potential ecological improvement measures can be identified and the ecological improvement potentials of these measures with various options could be quantified. Realization of this method is analyzed by a case study of gear hobbing machine. The goal of this paper is expected to give a complementary support for decision-making on eco-design of the machine tool. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The project described in this paper focuses on non-hazardous wastes coming from collection sites in France. The aim of this project is to increase the quantity and quality of reusable materials by optimizing the production chain for combustible and scrap metal, and to find the best way(s) for recovering “fines” which are currently disposed as final waste. This paper will highlight that the composition of the three sub-products (combustible for cement industry, scrap metal and fines) is interdependent, and that changes on one sub-product can impact the others. It will be shown that simple design or collection recommendations could improve significantly the value of the sub-products. The GISEMENT project is a partnership between two French companies: a recycler, a recycling equipment manufacturer, and a French laboratory, G-SCOP, specialized in Eco-design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays, more and more students feel a lack of teaching development for sustainability topics in their curriculum. In French engineering schools or universities most of training courses do not answer to this challenge because they modestly include the question of sustainability in their curricula. Companies also strongly evolve in their industrial strategy in order to integrate environmental, economic and social perspectives and criteria in their product development process. Thus, they are looking for new skills by recruiting young technicians and engineers. The question arises how can be improved the integration of basics of sustainable engineering in trainings rooted in technical knowledge. To start addressing such a question, we propose in this paper a skill crossover matrix. Later, this matrix will evolve toward guidelines which may allow combining specific knowledge of eco-design skills and cross-disciplinary competencies. First, we conduct a systematic review of the literature to identify fundamental skills and knowledge associated to sustainable development approach in engineering and then specifically focusing on ecodesign. Second, we have confronted advanced technical skills from engineer's framework to cross-disciplinary skills in order to identify which connection could be possible. Then, we propose a survey with different academic profiles at different levels of training courses in the French education system. This allow us to clearly define what means eco-design teaching for them to compare expectations with reality on the academic ground. Last, we identified which skills need to be developed. This maturity assessment will allow us to define basis for guidelines which must help later teachers in engineering and technology to create and define their own fundamental and training content for ecodesign. Furthermore, this tool will also allow students to have a better vision over of their progress in skill growing level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Eco-design is a design paradigm aiming to the development of sustainable products. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is considered an eco-design tool able to assess the product environmental performances through a life cycle perspective. However, LCA shows some limitations in industry's daily practice and cannot be considered a standard for implementing eco-design. The paper aims to describe the implementation of a novel eco-design teaching approach involving company's employees from different technical departments. LCA analysis of company's product portfolio allowed to create a specific eco-knowledge, used to train designers and engineers on this subject for the implementation of eco-design actions during the development of new products (espresso coffee machine). Results highlighted relevant learning outcomes and significant improvements in terms of environmental sustainability of a new product design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the arrival of the era of big data, large amounts of information need to be stored and computed. The complicated data analysis makes it impossible to extract, select and apply knowledge of eco-design in a short time. Considering the dynamics and reliability in the design process, this paper presents an approach to accelerate eco-design by establishing an active push system. The system mainly includes the following parts: the user design capability model, the database module (enterprise database, ecological design repository), the resource matching module, active push module, machine learning module. At last the design process of automobile transmission is used to explain the validity and rationality of the system. The test shows the system can reduce design time and optimize the design process when the product characteristics are related to ecological design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today, companies need to assess the recoverability of their products from the design phase, not only for legislative reasons but also to appraise how they will be able to recover all or part of their value when they reach end of life. The main reference calculation methods are both the norm ISO 22628, which addresses the automotive industry, and the IEC/TR 62635 report, which addresses the electrical and electronic equipment industry. Both reference methods only focus on mass preservation indicators (as legislation requires) but ignore important aspects such as material quality loss, environmental impacts, and economic value preservation. Indeed, multi-criteria assessment is needed as it can be a key factor for both improving product design and to help designers integrate recycled materials into their products. In that regard, several other studies exploring multi-criteria analysis ( i.e. technical, economic and/or environmental-based) do exist. The aim of this paper is to (i) present a critical review of current recoverability assessment methods and (ii) find the existing gaps by comparing whether the used indicators meet the designer needs or not. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper defines a framework called virtual eco-design aiming to support designers and engineers in the development of sustainable energy-related products. Virtual prototyping is used to perform energy consumption tests according with ecodesign and energy label regulations. The goal is to build a knowledge-based repository in which virtual tests are stored and classified to create eco-knowledge. Induction hob has been analysed to verify the applicability of the approach and the integration in a traditional product development process. Results highlight how the proposed methodology increases company eco-knowledge providing a tangible support in the definition of energy-label compliant products. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The collection of useful information from all stages of product lifecycle is on the premise to complete a life cycle assessment (LCA) study of the product. This naturally leads to the necessity to provide computerized tools to support a humanexpert. Unfortunately, most current employed information systems in the industry do not effectively support LCA-oriented data management. In this paper, a meta-model based approach for LCA oriented product life cycle related data retrieval and integration is proposed, which not only increases the efficiency but also ensure the consistency and traceability of data collection for LCA study.In this study, product life cycle is characterized from perspectives of product entity, operations upon the product entity and resulting process inventory. Then, a data meta model that defines the basic structure and contents of LCA-oriented dataset of the identified life cycle stage of identified product entity is proposed. Based on the proposed meta model, the multi-layer architecture of a LCA-oriented data service tool is then developed. It is consisted of the “Client” layer with interfaces for users to make life cycle data requests; the “Meta-model builder” layer to configure and parse the meta model for data source connection and data model instantiation; the “Data source access” layer which builds connections between data sources and the meta-model and realizes heterogeneous data retrieval and integration from different sources. The proposed approach is expected to ease the difficulties in performing LCA, especially in sorting, retrieval and integration of valuable data from exiting product and process models for life cycle modelling, and thus to better facilitate environment-friendly product design and manufacturing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Against the background of climate change and finite fossil resources, bio-based plastics have been in the focus of research for the last decade and were identified as a promising alternative to fossil-based plastics. Now, with an evolving bio-based plastic market and application range, the environmental advantages of bio-based plastic have come to the fore and identified as crucial by different stakeholders. While the majority of assessments for bio-based plastics are carried out based on attributional life cycle assessment, there have been only few consequential studies done in this area. Also, the application of eco-design strategies has not been in the focus for the bio-based products due to the prevailing misconceptions of renewable materials (as feedstock for bio-based plastics) considered in itself as an ‘eco-design strategy’. In this paper, we discuss the life cycle assessment as well as eco-design strategies of a bio-based product taking attributional as well as consequential approaches into account. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A large part of impacts that will be generated by a system / product during its life cycle are allocated during the earliest stages of the design process. In this paper we propose to trace the evolution of environmental impacts throughout a complex system design process through an industrial case. We follow the stages of a boat design process for maintenance of offshore wind farms. The different architectures sketched throughout the design process are evaluated in order to measure the impact of design decisions on the environmental performance of the system. The problematic of taking into account environmental constraints upstream of the design process abound methods but they often prove inadequate for complex systems whose subsystems interact in complex ways leading to conflicts in the decision of the right parameters. To meet the stakeholders’ needs, that appear (during the design project) in the iterative design process, the initial design is modified to fit the specifications. This iterative path between designers and users leads to uncertainties over the environmental impact of the system. It is then necessary to use smart design support tools allowing a negotiation in definition phase of system specifications. Thus the preliminary design is modified to incorporate changes and contributions occurred during the negotiation phase functional. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The continuously growing integration of mechanics, electronics, and informatics into modern products introduces a considerable complexity into product development activities. Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) methods are one approach to handle this complexity. Eco-design methods, which are also increasingly important due to sustainability focus of many companies, is not fully implemented or even not taken into account at all in MBSE methods. Therefore, this paper aims at integrating the environmental impacts of a mechatronic product in a MBSE method using Systems Modelling Language (SysML). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most important criteria to remain competitive in the marketplace is a suitable product design that satisfy requirements of a diverse range of stakeholders. But, ambiguous, different and general description of customer needs, major technological advance and significant change from traditional requirements (cost, performance etc.) to new requirements such as, economic, environmental, ecological and societal consideration make the design process more complicate. It should be noticed too, while the new requirements have a major effect on the product successfully, the traditional requirement should not be forgotten by designers. Unfortunately, new issues sometimes are deeply coupled with traditional functions, so the current design methodologies are not able to consider them in the product design process. In this regard, the development of new design methods and tools that facilitate design process by consideration new requirements is vital. The Axiomatic Design (AD) approach is one of the most promising design methodology in the field of conceptual design. This method is emerging as a superior method of design, particularly when innovation versus incremental design is needed. This paper focuses on setting up the redesign of the Beech Baron 58 tail, by using AD method that integrate with Quality Function Deployment (QFD) and Eco-Design concepts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For many years the market leadership was driven by offering better price on more product functions and services. The world is currently shifting towards social responsibility thinking. This changes the market behaviour, and leads to more innovations, such as designing new product/service/system using re-usable parts, new electric motor concepts, or inventing new chemical production procedures generating less waste, and many more opportunities. This paper introduces a research valorisation activity that aims at developing a program of training and coaching to prepare students and industry partners to this emerging innovation wave. The most outstanding particularity of this program is that it combines management and engineering aspects of sustainability in a form that empowers trainees to deploy sustainable approaches in practice. The particular target group of design engineers get equipped with fundamentally important sustainability knowledge enabling them to include sustainability considerations in their products and systems design. Eco-design is positioned as a key lever towards achieving sustainable product-service systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

De**sign has a great role to play in sustainability. Interesting progresses has been performed within the last decades. Nevertheless, some issues of sustainability, and their impact on design, remains poorly studied. Specifically, when it comes to the field of local value creation, the literature in design is still limited. However, the Local Value Creation (LVC) thinking can be a great insight for designers to develop more eco-innovative concepts, through new product design, new services and new business models. In order to go towards this direction, it is necessary to include new variables that are rarely considered in design processes such as the local workforce, sustainable local resources or the customization of the new product or service for local customers. This paper proposes a better understanding of the relation between eco-design approaches and LVC, and more precisely how current eco-design approaches consider this issue. To do so, a first part introduces the Local Value Creation concept and its challenges for sustainability. Then, a second part focuses on a literature review to understand how the LVC dimension is studied in the eco-design process. This will lead in a third section to concretely characterize how eco-design approaches and tools consider LCV issue.A last section proposes to identify potential contradiction between the LVC and the eco-design concept, in order to draw first outlines of a new eco-design paradigm with a Local Value Creation dimension. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental issues due to emerging markets and rapid development of consumer goods’ consumption require a new model to design more sustainable products. While traditional eco-design methods (LCA, Check-lists, Guidelines, DfX tools…) are generally restricted to a local optimization of the product or to macro-rules for defining an environmental strategy, this article presents an eco-innovative method based on product upgradability which is the integration of functional enrichments on the product. Indeed, the integration of upgrades offers new opportunities for facilitating the dissemination of the remanufacturing approach, the dissemination of Product-Service Systems, or for increasing the lifetime of product. This article presents an eco-innovative method based on upgradability consisting in: exploring the potential upgrades of modules - PMoL (SADT activity A4), the potential value network structures for upgradability - VaNS (A3) and the potential serviceable upgrades including eco-learning strategies - SMoL (A5). This method combines then the results PMoL, VaNS and SMoL to form promising Upgradable Modules Scenarios – UpMoS (A6), which are completed by the specification of an associated value network (A7) and the consolidation of eco-usage services and services offers (A8). The final result obtained, Upgradable systems concepts– UpSys are then assessed thanks to a multicriteria approach (A9) considering environmental, economic and user's and stakeholder's attractiveness criteria. To summarize, this method is structured in two rounds. The first round (A3, A4, A5) aims to explore widely the possibilities offered by the upgradability avoiding the complexity of an approach dealing with several parameters simultaneously. The purpose of the second round (A6, A7, A8, A9) is to specify and assess Upgradable systems encompassing the overall results of the exploration. Before performing this work, relevant information needs to be collected for the project (market information, customer segments, technologies, stakeholders, environmental impacts of the current product, etc.) and acceptability domains of upgradable systems have to be analyzed (A1, A2). This paper presents therefore this eco-innovative approach based on five founding principles and answering to the requirements identified in the literature for a good and effective eco-design method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The design of products with environmental considerations is a global strategy based on life cycle thinking. All stages of the design process should take into account environmental considerations in order to face the environmental challenge. Unfortunately, designers encounter difficulties in the case of brand new products due to the absence of environmental impacts feedback. The designers need assistance early in the design process to acquire environmental knowledge. In order to solve this problem, the paper argues that the functional analysis of products (early stage in the design process) and Life Cycle Assessment (late stage in the design process) can benefit each other in a collaborative process. A comparative analysis is first proposed between Functional Analysis (FA) and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to highlight propositions that could assist both FA practitioners and LCA experts. A strategy is then proposed to create a win-win situation to enhance environmental knowledge early in the design process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to present the implementation of a new serious game called “SimGreen” to optimize the systemic programming of environmental actions into a company. Today, there are numerous environmental methods and practices developed to allow companies improving the way they try to decrease their environmental impacts. But all the existing methods are not independent and it can be helpful to consider all of them to make decision when managing the way to answer environmental objectives for a company. According to a cartography of environmental actions, which is a research result of a project named “convergence” funded by the French national research agency, we encourage the participants during the game to map all the possible environmental trajectories to answer an environmental objective. Then, we ask them to identify the most suitable environmental solutions depending on a specified context taking into account the different resources or competencies in the company. This serious game has been experimented in 8 sessions. The main feedback demonstrated that this serious game provides a joyful game to support the learning about systemic environmental integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper presents a procedure that can be used to determine what kind of design intervention strategies can be implemented by designers for the improvement of the global environmental performance during the use phase of a product, regarding consumers’ behaviors. Four design intervention strategies have to be tested on espresso coffee machine: written information, eco-feedback, objective to reach and persuasive technology. Energy and water consumption during use phase of 36 regular espresso coffee machine users will be measured during the experimentation. At this stage, a first design strategy has been tested and environmental benefits have been highlighted thanks to LCA analyzes. Users’ variables such as environmental knowledge, attitude, habits, are also measured and a statistical analysis will be conducted for the validation of the model of relationship proposed. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]