Assessing product design alternatives with respect to environmental performance and sustainability: a case study for circuit pack faceplates

Environmental lifecycle assessment (LCA) must be integrated into design systems to achieve continuous improvement in the environmental performance of products. This provides the designer feedback on the lifecycle environmental impacts of an evolving design, emphasizing material, process or form substitution to decrease environmental impact. The New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) has developed a prototype design for environment (DFE) and environmental LCA software tool that interfaces with Pro/Engineer (CAD tool) to extract product description and bill of materials data in order to conduct an environmental LCA inventory analysis. The inventory analysis is modeled to account for materials flows, energy usage, and environmental burdens, as well as costs associated with the product life cycle. Environmental impact assessment of the inventory analysis and interpretation of the results are performed with EcoPro, a universal lifecycle metric developed at Lucent Technologies that can provide the designer quantified feedback on environmental performance and sustainability in the form of single indicators for resource productivity (RP) and eco-efficiency (EE). Two different circuit pack faceplate designs were evaluated. Pro/Engineer files representing a proposed "two-shot" molded thermoplastic faceplate and a current metal (aluminum) assembly design were evaluated using the NJIT software tool and EcoPro. Results for RP and EE of the two designs and comparison of cost data demonstrate the benefits of the proposed design as well as the advantages of using this approach to evaluate alternative designs, construction, processes and materials.