Improving Environmental Performance of Products by Integrating Ecodesign Methods and Tools into a Reference Model for New Product Development

摘要

New product development (NPD) is a critical process to improve a company's competitiveness. As environmental impacts generated throughout the product lifecycle are significantly determined during the early phase of its development, NPD plays a crucial role in enhancing the environmental performance of new products. Ecodesign may be defined as the systematic introduction of environmental concerns during product development. Despite the fact that several opportunities for competitive advantage have been associated to ecodesign the implementation of this concept has not reached companies worldwide mainly due to the gap between eco-oriented and product-oriented research. Thus both points of view must come together in order to achieve ecodesign benefits. This paper aims at proposing a systematic approach to do it by introducing some selected ecodesign methods and tools into the early phases of a reference model for NPD. The expected result is a set of structured activities that can successfully combine ecological and business perspectives. This paper presents some preliminary results on the field of sustainable product development (SPD) conducted by the authors.