Sustainable Sheet-Metal Design: Employing the Product Carbon Footprint as Support for Engineers in Developing New Product Generations

This study investigates a data-driven approach for integrating sustainability criteria into the design process to reduce the Product Carbon Footprint (PCF) of sheet-metal parts. In a Live-Lab research environment, the design solutions of four engineering teams were analyzed at each iteration to assess how immediate PCF feedback and detailed sustainability information impacted both the design process and the final Product Carbon Footprint of the sheet-metal parts. The findings show that understanding the influencing factors of sustainable sheet-metal design and receiving PCF feedback led to PCF reductions of over 30 %, highlighting the importance of quantifiable sustainability metrics in industrial design practices.