An approach to the EuP Directive and the application of the economic eco-design for complex products

Abstract

Current changes in European Union legislation forces design engineers to incorporate sustainable thinking, environmental protection and eco-design into their design considerations. Many companies are concerned that integrating the eco-design principle into their product design process could result in increasing product cost and a loss of their competitive edge. Within this paper recent and possible future developments of the 'eco-design of energy using products' (EuP) Directive are discussed as well as the effects this has on companies. The main outcome of this research is the development of a design decision methodology that helps the design engineer of complex products to apply the eco-design principles without a trade-off on economic issues. The paper explains how the framework takes into account the product hierarchy and supports changes to the product design. Furthermore the paper presents an example of how the basics of the methodology are applied to a small household item.

Environmentally conscious manufacturing and product recovery (ECMPRO): A review of the state of the art

“…Torres et al (2004) present a semi-automated personal computer disassembly cell composed of several sub-systems. A computer vision subsystem is used for the recognition and localisation of the product and of each Kalisvaart and van der Horst, 1995;Cristofari et al, 1996;Fiksel, 1996;Billatos and Basaly, 1997;Feldmann et al, 1999;Zhang et al, 1999;Hundal, 2001;Mehta and Wang, 2001;Santos-Reyes and Lawlor-Wright, 2001;Knight and Curtis, 2002;Lye et al, 2002;Madu et al, 2002;Kuo and Wu, 2003;Masui et al, 2003;Bhamra, 2004;Giudice et al, 2006;Hopkinson et al, 2006;Kuo et al, 2006;Bevilacqua et al, 2007;Boks and Stevels, 2007;Wang, 2003, 2007;Grote et al, 2007;Johansson et al, 2007;Sakao, 2007;Li et al, 2008b;Mascle and Zhao, 2008;Mathieux et al, 2008;Park and Tahara, 2008;Platcheck et al, 2008;Qian andZhang, 2009 DFD Kroll andHanft, 1998;Kroll and Carver, 1999;Veerakamolmal and Gupta, 1999;Das et al, 2000;Chen, 2001;Ferrer, 2001;Allada, 2001, 2006;Mital, 2003a, 2005;Villalba et al, 2004;Banda ...…”

“…Grote et al (2007) integrate TRIZ, DFX tools and LCA to develop a DFE methodology. Bevilacqua et al (2007) present a product design methodology by integrating DFE and LCA.…”

“…Majority of the researchers use LCA within a DFE methodology as a tool to measure the environmental impact of a product's design (Zhang et al, 1999;Mehta and Wang, 2001;Wang, 2003, 2007;Bevilacqua et al, 2007;Boks and Stevels, 2007;Sakao, 2007;Grote et al, 2007).…”

Sustainable Manufacturing and Design: Concepts, Practices and Needs

“… The relationship between quality function deployment, life cycle analysis and contingent valuation is investigated by Borea and Wang [54], and these factors are compared with customer willingness to pay for environmentally benign products.  A product development approach using design for X (DFX) tools, such as life cycle analysis and theory of inventive problem solving (TRIZ) is discussed by Grote et al [55]. This approach seeks to assist the design engineer in employing eco-design principles without significant economic trade-offs.…”

Developing complex, business‐to‐business products: issues and implications

“…However, there has been a fair amount of research on complex market offerings in other fields like engineering (e.g. Gann and Salter, 2000;Gil, 2007;Grote et al, 2007;Hobday, 1998Hobday, , 2000Hofer and Halman, 2005;Wang and Zhang, 2008) and management (e.g. Braha and Bar-Yam, 2007;Danilovic and Browning, 2007;Ethiraj, 2007;Marshall and Brady, 2001;Mitchell and Singh, 1996;Novak and Eppinger, 2001;Oshri, Newell, and Pan, 2007;Paajanen, 2001;Singh 1997) that focuses on complex market offerings from the suppliers' perspective.…”