Uncertainty model for product environmental performance scoring

As product designers begin to make design decisions motivated by environmental performance, it is critical for environmental experts to present designers with useful information about the quality of both performance measures and the data on which the measures are based. In this paper, we discuss sources of uncertainty in environmental performance measurement using Motorola's Green Design Advisor environmental scoring software. We present a probabilistic method for measuring both data and model uncertainty in Green Design Advisor scores. Using Monte Carlo simulation, this model was applied to two Motorola product designs to generate probability distributions for the scores. The products have the same functionality, but one was designed with environmental performance in mind. The results of this study indicate that the uncertainty model can distinguish between Green Design Advisor scores which differ by 10% or more. In addition, approximation formulas were developed which give results similar to the simulation results, with a computation time short enough to be useful for an environmental scoring software.