Application of life cycle assessment tools to sustainable product design and manufacturing

Sustainable design and manufacturing must address economic, societal, and environmental dimensions simultaneously over the product life cycle, e.g., manufacturing, use, and end-of-life. While decision support tools have been developed to assist designers in creating more sustainable products, there is a dearth of tools for addressing the sustainability impacts of manufacturing during engineering design. To respond to this need, this paper examines how designers and planners can address key sustainable manufacturing measures such as energy use, resource consumption, waste production, and occupational health. As an illustration, the functional and life cycle performance of several alternatives for a steel component are analyzed. A sensitivity analysis is performed to identify the product and process variables with the greatest effect on the overall life cycle impact. Finally, the analysis considers how changes in the product/process design impact production economics and measures of sustainable performance.