Application of QFD for Enabling Environmentally Conscious Design
Year: 2011
Editor: Chakrabarti, A.
Author: Rathod,Gopinath; Vinodh,S; Madhyasta.U. R
Section: Eco-Design, Sustainable Manufacturing, Design for Sustainbility
Page(s): 457-463
Abstract
Increasing competition among themanufacturing organizations recognizes environmental consciousness as an important concept for surviving in the competitive world. Environmental friendliness has becoming the need of contemporary product design scenario. Many design tools are available for evaluating a product’s impact on environment. Quality function deployment (QFD) is a tool that analyzes the functions of a product that could be used at early product development stage. A sustainable product will impart little impact on the environment during its life cycle. In this context, QFD for environment (QFDE) has been used in this research paper. QFDE consists of four phases. QFDE phases I and II are concerned with the identification of components that are focused on product design considering both environmental and traditional requirements. QFDE phases III and IV enables the design engineers to examine the possibility of design improvements for components and determining the improvement effect of design changes. This article reports a case study on the application of QFDE to components of electric car being manufactured by an Indian electric car manufacturing organization
Keywords: Quality Function Deployment, Product design, Environmentally Conscious Quality Function Deployment, Design for environment