A Methodological Approach to Sustainable Product Development by Combining Life Cycle Assessment and Systems Enginieering

Product requirements and the reduction of its ecological footprint are often in conflict with each other. However, sustainable development is seen to be important as shown by international agreements. Environmental improvement of a product, e.g. with material substitution, might change a product-significant physical parameter. Therefore, a methodology is conducted which combines the result of Life Cycle Assessment with modelling and simulation concepts to design an environmentally friendly and physically functional product. By applying life cycle impact data to different system model configurations, their results can be compared to show a more sustainable product design, mitigating global warming for example. This is achieved by linking Life Cycle Assessment to the topology of a system in a five-step method. The conducted five-step method consists of Life Cycle Assessment, hotspots, data sorting, system topology and solutions. The developed method enables the identification of materials and components with high environmental impact already in early design stages, even before the physical product exists. This allows targeted decisions for sustainable design by evaluating environmental performance alongside functional requirements at a conceptual level.