An integrated approach for the sustainability measure of industrial products in design stages

Nowadays, companies have to deal with ever more complex environmental concerns, which affect a wider cause-effect chain, due to the pressure of both stricter environmental regulations and the new green awareness of customers. From designers’ point of view, the development of sustainable products leads engineers to take into considerations environmental aspects in concurrency with traditional technical and economical aspects since the beginning of design activities. This change of direction brings to light the importance of operating from the first stages of the products’ development. The research work carried out is an attempt to define an integrated methodology for the assessment and the improvement of environmental performances of products based on the use of the Environmental Effect Analysis (EEA) method. For these reasons, several checklists aimed at reducing the gap between theory and practice in the use of traditional ecodesign tools were defined. The methodology was tested by means of its application to an industrial case study.