Integrating Sustainability in the Strategic Stage of an Innovation Process: A Design Brief Perspective

This book chapter explores the uptake of environmental sustainability in the front end of an innovation process, and the outcome of this stage: the design brief. The study is based on a content analysis of 80 design briefs from Belgian enterprises, a focus group with representatives from 14 Belgian companies and an in-depth interview with two Belgian chief executives. The results show an overview of the most and least used environmental sustainability strategies in the design brief and demonstrate a remarkable difference in uptake between large enterprises and small and medium-sized enterprises. Findings show that companies often deal with sustainability on a hidden and decomposed level. Furthermore, a generic model for the design brief process is presented with the different entry points for sustainability. Crucial factors for integrating environmental sustainability in the design brief are discussed in the last section. The paper concludes with a recommendation to integrate ecodesign targets in the design brief and discussing them with the decision makers in all the stages of the design briefing process. With no environmental commitment in the design brief towards the final product, no time, budgets, and staff will be allocated on this subject during the operational stage

Greening the design brief

Front End Innovation is a hot research topic, but there is still little research done on its relationship to design for sustainability. This paper explores the challenges of integrating environmental sustainability in this early stages of an innovation process and the design brief. The study is based on a content analysis of 35 design briefs from Belgian SMEs and multinationals, and a practitioners session with representatives from 14 Belgian companies. This results indicate a limited uptake of sustainability in Belgian design briefs. Furthermore, it argues that the use of certain strategies, such as front-loading, pushing sustainability upstream in the briefing process and sustainability opportunity identification in the front end, could help in greening the design brief

Sustainability in design engineering education: experiences in Northern Europe

In recent years, the implementation of sustainability into the curricula of engineering has become increasingly important. This paper focuses on the experiences of integrating sustainability in Design Engineering education in the academic bachelor programs at Delft University of Technology in The Netherlands, at the University College of West-Flanders in Belgium, and at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. The different approaches are described and discussed. This paper aims to share insights and lessons learned in how to accomplish true integration of sustainability in bachelor course curricula of Industrial Design Engineering

Effect of subinhibitory exposure to quaternary ammonium compounds on the ciprofloxacin susceptibility ofEscherichia colistrains in animal husbandry

Background Quaternary ammonium compound based disinfectants are commonly used in pig and poultry husbandry to maintain farm hygiene. However, studies have shown that subinhibitory concentrations of these disinfectants may increase antibiotic resistance. Investigation of antibiotic susceptibility is usually assessed via the microbroth dilution method, although this conventional culture-based technique only provides information on the bacteriostatic activity of an antimicrobial agent. Therefore, experiments were performed to investigate the effect of prior benzalkonium chloride (BKC) exposure on the viability of subsequent ciprofloxacin (CIP) treatedEscherichia coli. Results Following CIP treatment, bacterial cell counts were significantly higher after exposure to a subinhibitory BKC concentration than without BKC exposure. The flow cytometric results suggested a BKC-dependent onset of membrane damage and loss of membrane potential. Conclusion Our results indicate a lower bactericidal effect of CIP treatment on BKC-exposedE. coliisolates compared to unexposedE. coliisolates

Making the right things

The world of today is a wonderful and exciting playground for designers. We live in a time where -technically sound- almost everything is possible. We can fly a man to the moon and bring him back alive on earth. After proving this level of competence of human kind, it cannot be that hard to make clever and sustainable products for everyday use. Is it? It might not sound like rocket science, but somehow it is. It appears to be more complex than ever before. In a world with endless technical possibilities a new challenge is popping up. Now that we can ‘make the things right’, the real design challenge of today is ‘making the right things’

Design for end-of-life: a teaching method for the front-end of the design process

The first phases of the engineering design process, such as the problem definition, the information gathering and the idea generation phase, are commonly considered as important steps in product development, since the cost of a product is assumed to be largely determined within these design steps. Besides limiting the product costs, designers are nowadays forced to reduce the environmental impact and to optimize possible economic gains over the total product lifecycle. Therefore, within this paper a design method is presented to assist designers to take into account different End-of-Life (EoL) treatment strategies in the early stages of the design process. During the proposed design method, designers are first introduced to the existing EoL treatment options and thereafter encouraged to apply different design strategies, such as design for (active) disassembly. Also, the results of adopting the proposed design method within the Erasmus European Intensive Program (IP2012) ‘Green products through a multicoloured approach’, a multidisciplinary two week workshop that was held at Howest (University College of West-Flanders) in Belgium, are presented in this paper

Green products through a multi-coloured approach, an experiment in multi-disciplinary education

Intensive Programme “Green products through a multicoloured approach”, a multidisciplinary workshop that was held at Howest (University College of West-Flanders) in Belgium between 9 and 20 February 2010. This workshop was based on the experience of conducting a similar multi-disciplinary workshop held three times in 2007-9. The focus of the workshop conducted over a period of 11 days was to foster inter-operability between the different disciplines (Engineering fields and Industrial Design) and work towards a common goal of understanding the paradigm of Innovation and implementing it in the modern European and Global context. The workshop IP 2010, similarly to the previous edition, will be repeated in a three year cycle between the partner institutions: University College of West-Flanders and the INDACO Department of Politecnico di Milano (playing the main organizational role) together with Escola Superior de Artes e Design, University of Wales Institute Cardiff, Université de Technologie de Compiègne, Haagse Hogeschool, Polytech’Savoie École d’ingénieurs. 170 students, 20 academic tutors and 5-10 industrial partners of the regional area of Kortrijk (Belgium), the hosting town of the event, participated in this event. It has been conceptualized that sustainability and green technologies are entirely too complex to be tackled alone by a single discipline. The workshop envisages to teach and test this theory in a live exercise where students from diverse disciplines, both technically competent and creative, work and execute a project as a coherent group. The themes of the projects were performed as a professional design project, for this reason the design briefs were assigned by the industrial partners. Parallel morning lectures in different specialized areas of sustainability (eco-design tools, sustainable energy, economic and management issues, legislation, socio-cultural aspects …) triggered the students to make the right decisions in their industrial project

Multidisciplinary teamwork as a crucial competence in modern engineering education programs

Abstract- The current process of designing and developing new industrial products has become more differentiated and complex. This has resulted in the need for multidisciplinary teams from the initial product development stage. Because engineers are mainly educated in designing typical technical product related aspects, the need for multidisciplinary competences arises. Simulation of real-life industrial innovation cases using multidisciplinary teams must be integrated in engineering education programs in order to develop the necessary competences. This paper describes the importance and implementation of multidisciplinary teamwork in modern engineering education programs as well as the evaluation of the non-technical competences, typically accompanying such project