Sustainable Product Design Assessment : Toward Sustainable Manufacturing

Sustainable development decision making should consider the possible impact on three roots of sustainability: environment, society and economy. One always must keep in mind that what the impacts of him/her decision are toward future generations. Mangers of any manufacturing company are now aware of the importance of manufacturing their products using a sustainable approach so that they can move toward sustainable manufacturing. One important step to achieve this goal is to control the impact of their manufactured products toward three dimensions of sustainability. A twofold case study was conducted on an automotive product integrated with a fuzzy evaluation method based on LCA principals: (1) sustainability assessment of current design and identifying the weak points; (2) improving the identified weak point and reassessment of its sustainability index. A Graphical User Interface was developed based on MATLAB coding in order to facilitate the product sustainability assessment. Outcomes of this case study show that how a simple improvement in material selection can contribute toward sustainable product development.