The environmental impacts caused by products in all phases of their life cycle are mainly due to their design specification. Indeed they result from decisions and definitions made in the beginning of product development.
Ecodesign is as a proactive approach that considers environmental issues into the product development and related processes in order to minimize environmental impacts throughout the product’s material life cycle (from raw material extraction and manufacturing to use and end-of-life), without compromising performance, functionality, quality and cost.
The application of Ecodesign can result in product and service innovation, new business opportunities and models, attendance of legal compliance, improved product quality, risk reduction and even cost reduction.
Some of the research questions we deal with are:
- How to integrate ecodesign into product development processes?
- How to assess the ecodesign maturity level?
- How to define actions to improve the ecodesign maturity level?
- Which are the ecodesign practices, methods, tools and guidelines that could improve the ecodesign maturity level?
- How ecodesign is related to other management approaches, such as, product-service system (PSS), remanufacturing, product-life cycle management (PLM) and innovation?
- How to create symbiosis indicators in order to support the industrial ecology?
Finished projects:
- Integration of ecodesign into the unified model for product development management: case study in a house appliance company
- Ecodesign Maturity Model (EcoM2): a framework to support companies in the selection and implementation of ecodesign practices
The following projects were developed in the context of the EcoM2
- Proposal of a simplified diagnosis method for defining the profile of practices application in one ecodesign maturity model (EcoM2)
- Guidelines to support companies identifying, analyzing and deploying environmental legislations into product requirements
- Guide for the selecting product-related Environmental Performance Indicators (EPIs)
- Guide for environmental benchmarking of products
- Guide for applying DfE (design for environment) matrix
- Guide for applying eco functional matrix
- Guide for applying environmental FMEA
Researchers:
- Henrique Rozenfeld – professor
- Daniela Cristina Antelmi Pigosso – (partner) former PhD researcher, pos-doc research assistant at DTU Denmark
- Taís Hamamoto – former MSc researcher
- Gabriel Couto Mantese – PhD researcher
- Américo Guelere Filho – former PhD researcher
- Mariana Ferraz – former undergraduate research assistant
- Isabela Ianhez Issa – former undergraduate research assistant
- Felipe Caldas Harding Guastelli – former undergraduate research assistant
- Raphael Laraia Rocha de Barros Cobra – – former undergraduate research assistant
Main publications:
- ISSA, ISABELA I. ; PIGOSSO, DANIELA C.A. ; MCALOONE, TIM C. ; ROZENFELD, H. . Leading product-related environmental performance indicators: a selection guide and database. Journal of Cleaner Production, v. 108, p. 321-330, 2015.
- PIGOSSO, DANIELA C.A. ; MCALOONE, T. C. ; ROZENFELD, H. . Characterization of the State-of-the-art and Identification of Main Trends for Ecodesign Tools and Methods: Classifying Three Decades of Research and Implementation. Journal of the Indian Institute of Science, v. 95, p. 405-427, 2015.
- PIGOSSO, DANIELA C.A. ; ROZENFELD, H. ; MCALOONE, TIM C. . Ecodesign maturity model: a management framework to support ecodesign implementation into manufacturing companies. Journal of Cleaner Production, v. 59, p. 160-163, 2013.
- PIGOSSO, D. C. A. ; ZANETTE, E. T. ; GUELERE FILHO, Américo ; OMETTO, A. R. ; ROZENFELD, H. . Ecodesign methods focused on remanufacturing. Journal of Cleaner Production, v. 18, p. 21-31, 2010.
- PIGOSSO, D. C. A. ; ROZENFELD, H. ; SELIGER, G. . Ecodesign Maturity Model: criteria for methods and tools classification. In: Günther Seliger; Marwan M.K. Khraisheh; I.S. Jawahir. (Org.). Advances in Sustainable Manufacturing. Berlin Heidelberg: Springer Verlag, 2011, v. , p. 239-243.
- FELICIO, M., AMARAL, D., ESPOSTO, K., & DURANY, X. G. (2016). Industrial symbiosis indicators to manage eco-industrial parks as dynamic systems.Journal of Cleaner Production, 2016, v118, p. 54-64.
- GUELERE FILHO, Américo ; ROZENFELD, H. ; PIGOSSO, D. C. A. ; OMETTO, A. R. . Improving environmental performance of products by integrating ecodesign methods and tools into a reference model for new product development. In: LOUREIRO, Geilson; CURRAN, Richard. (Org.). Complex Systems Concurrent Engineering. London: Springer, 2007, v. , p. 355-362.