Sustainable Design Evaluation – Integration of Sustainability in Product Development Processes

To develop sustainable products, product developers must be able to incorporate sustainability into individual decision processes during product development. In doing so, they are faced with the conflicting demands of time and cost pressure and the growing complexity caused by the many requirements and (sustainability) criteria.

The Sustainable Design Evaluation, which is presented in this publication, is a method to enable product developers to estimate the impact of their product-related decisions along the three dimensions of sustainability across all phases of the product life cycle. The core of the Sustainable Design Evaluation is a two-stage assessment technique enabling a relative and comparable quantification of ecological, economic, and social criteria. Furthermore, an aggregation scheme for those criteria is introduced. Based on the two-stage assessment technique and the system of aggregation, the results of the Sustainable Design Evaluation can be displayed clearly and interpreted easily by product developers to assess the impacts of their product-related decisions.

Thus, in contrast to existing methods, the SDE combines ease of use and interpretation with a sufficiently holistic sustainability assessment.