Checklist-Based Assessment Methodology for Sustainable Design

The manufacturing industry is faced with a challenge to create products with less environmental impact targeting a sustainable society. To cope with this challenge, sustainable design or ecodesign plays one of the most important roles. Manufacturers often use ecodesign checklists that are intended for obtaining eco-labels, such as Eco Mark in Japan, in order to support design improvements of products in terms of environmental consciousness. Eco-label checklists are, however, insufficient to support designing products rationally because the relationships between individual requirements of checklists and environmental impact are undetermined. This paper proposes a method for supporting assessment for ecodesign by developing a weighted checklist from a conventional eco-label checklist. This weighted checklist assesses the environmental performance of a product based on the potential environmental improvement of each requirement, derived by life cycle simulation. Results of a case study involving a digital duplicator indicate that the proposed method successfully clarifies the requirements that should be improved in the present product. When the design improvements are applied, the assessment of the product’s $CO2$ emissions shows an improvement by 8%.