Environmental consciousness in integrated product development

Environmentally conscious design has become an important area, since demands for environmental friendliness are increasing from society down to the end-customer. The issue is defined as of strategic importance for industry and, therefore, the development of instruments for integrating environmental aspects in the actual product development process is needed. The efficiency of this process is of great importance to corporations as a competitive key-factor. With this perspective, several studies have been performed at Sweden's Division of Integrated Product Development, Department of Machine Design, Royal Institute of Technology. The use of life-cycle assessments has, for instance, been studied as well as the implementation of environmental management systems. These studies show positive effects on decreasing environmental loads. Further research on these issues are presented with exemplification of research questions.