Towards a New Framework for Product Development

In the mid-1980s, Andreasen and Hein first described their model of Integrated Product Development. Many Danish companies quickly embraced the principles of integrated product development and adapted the model to their specific business and product context. However, there is concern amongst many Danish companies that Integrated Product Development no longer provides a sufficient way of describing industry’s product development activity. More specifically, five of these companies have supported a programme of research activities at the Technical University of Denmark, which seeks to develop a new framework for product development. This paper will describe the research approach being taken, present some initial findings, and outline a vision of a new working approach to product development

Using empirical data to build an advisory tool for eco-design

Many product manufacturers are now implementing eco-design principles, albeit to varying degrees. It is these degrees of variance that were of particular interest in the research presented in this paper. Based on the hypothesis that there exists no single systematic approach to eco-design, which allows for the consideration of environmental issues in every stage of the product development process, an exploratory study sought to identify the various stages that companies travelled through when implementing eco-design principles. The electrical/electronics industry was the chosen subject for the study. Results from this empirical research revealed that there is a common sequence of events that many companies go through when integrating eco-design into their product development processes, as presented in the model of eco-design integration in this paper. This sequence of events would be easily recognised by change management practitioners. Further to the common sequence of change in the companies, it was found that there were also common issues which companies aimed to improve when attempting to learn more about eco-design. Plotting the model of eco-design integration against the common issues it was possible to develop a tool that was useful for industry, allowing companies to chart their progress in the eco-design issues of greatest concern to themselves. The "eco-design advisor" presented is the result of the development of the model into a tool

Challenges of environmentally conscious design

A key opportunity for product manufacturers to proactively reduce environmental impact lies in the design process. Industry is responding to this opportunity by seeking tools and methods to support environmentally conscious design (ECD), with some companies already performing ECD, though with crude tools. The issues governing ECD are discussed in this paper. A mathematical representation is used to illustrate this

Towards a new framework for product development

In the mid-1980s, Andreasen and Hein first described their model of Integrated Product Development. Many Danish companies quickly embraced the principles of integrated product development and adapted the model to their specific business and product context. However, there is concern amongst many Danish companies that Integrated Product Development no longer provides a sufficient way of describing industry’s product development activity. More specifically, five of these companies have supported a programme of research activities at the Technical University of Denmark, which seeks to develop a new framework for product development. This paper will describe the research approach being taken, present some initial findings, and outline a vision of a new working approach to product development

Application of computer simulation to economically justify the design of a life-cycle approach

Take back legislation is increasingly placing responsibility for product End Of Life (EOL) on the manufacturer who produced the product originally. In view of this, companies are beginning to design products that are recyclable in order to reduce the costs of landfill disposal. Some innovative companies are also taking back EOL products to their financial advantage. This article illustrates how a particular company evaluated the economic impact of taking back products at the EOL

Success in environmentally conscious design: How is it achieved and maintained?

As Environmentally Conscious Design (ECD) is growing in importance and an increasing number of companies are beginning to introduce it into their product development processes, it is interesting to establish how companies have made it work. As this concept is still new for many organizations it is difficult to predict exactly what constitutes successful ECD. As part of the DEEDS research project at Cranfield University it was therefore decided to conduct a series of in-depth interviews in thirty companies from the electronic/electrical sector in the UK, Central Europe and USA. This paper presents two of the major research findings from this project. Firstly decisions that have a major environmental impact are largely made in the pre-specification stages of the product development process. Secondly, it is recognized that most companies have developed an information supply system to support ECD and have used people identified as environmental champions to do this. This paper explores the significance of these two findings and highlights the way in which other organizations can learn from these results

ICED 11, København: Design processes

This volume is concerned with Design Processes, and contains 50 papers on the planning, monitoring, modelling, management and improvement of design processes

Integrating environmental decisions into the product development process. II. the later stages

This paper reports on the results of a three year UK government funded research project entitled design for the environment decision support (DEEDS). As part of this project, a survey of the electronic and electrical industry was carried our in order to understand the way in which industry in the UK, Central Europe and the USA are carrying out ecodesign. The survey also investigated the successes and failures that companies have experienced and the lessons learnt along the way. In this second paper, the authors are concerned with the implementation of environmental considerations post-specification