Modeling for sustainable product development strategies with general morphological analysis

Abstract

Sustainable product development is currently of concern by scientists within both academia and engineering. Despite existing literature proposed related to detailed aspects for design for sustainability (D4S), the modeling of life cycle driving forces for D4S in different levels remains insufficient. A morphological analysis (MA) approach was applied to explore the strategies in sustainable product development in this work. With the experts' brainstorming and MA framework, the results for solutions to D4S were obtained under the support program from the Swedish Morphological Society. The specific factors and states for six sustainable development scenarios were acquired and compared. Platform-based innovation, flexible manufacturing system, multi-material lightweight design, energy efficiency priority, disassemble to reuse, remanufacturing, recycling (3R), LCA and CAX software are identified as key strategies for D4S. The sustainability-improving strategies for companies with an eco-design basis, small to medium enterprises (SME), and governments are also briefly discussed respectively.