Evaluation of Sustainability Performance of Product Design Element Concepts Using Analytic Hierarchy Process

Abstract

ntegrating sustainable product design into the design process has been acknowledged nowadays by many companies for producing sustainable products. The integration should be implemented during the early stage of product development process so that the sustainability of the product can be evaluated before manufacturing the product. Although a number of studies have been conducted on the integration in many aspects along with many approaches, evaluation of the sustainability of the product during its total life-cycle while it is being designed has not been comprehensively investigated. In this paper, Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is used to evaluate product design element concept during conceptual design stage by providing a weightage of sustainability metrics throughout the total life-cycle of product and finalize the preferred product design configuration by selecting the highest sustainability index of the design element concept. The approach is useful for product designers to design many concepts of product design elements and then to select the most likely sustainable design element to configure in one complete product. An example of an armed chair is used to demonstrate this approach.

A Review on Sustainability Characteristics Development for Wooden Furniture Design

“…Hassan et al [68] used sustainability criteria to determine the sustainability performance of evaluated products using the weightage of sustainability metrics to finalise the design configuration. This would help product designers to choose various designs at the early stages of the design concept.…”

“…As previously displayed in Tables A3-A5, the furniture characteristics of Dangeli-co et al [32], Baeriswyl and Eppinger [55], and Hassan et al [68] were carefully combined with the other criteria to identify more information on the characteristic selection for further testing and evaluation.…”

“…[ 25,32,55,60,67,68,71,75,78,82,88,92] (ii) Products are easy to recycle at the end of product life, based on to the material used. [25,[30][31][32]55,67,68,70,71,73,81,92,96] Design suitable for assembly and disassembly (i) A new product must be designed efficiently for disassembly. [31,67,70,71,75,82,96] (ii) Identify the joints and fasteners that are easy to access and separate using standard tools.…”

“…(i) Product that can be reused at the end of product life without changing its primary function and quality. [31,67,68,70,71,81] (ii) Product or components/scraps/waste can be used for further development.…”

“…Products can be remanufactured at the end of their life without changing their major function and quality. [32,67,68,70,71]…”