Autodesk Offers a “Sneak Peek” at its New Sustainable Design Tool

It would appear that the Autodesk, Granta partnership forged earlier last fall has begun to bear fruit. Last week, Autodesk reportedly unveiled a working prototype of its new sustainable materials design software tool, during its inaugural Sustainability Summit event.

That’s good news – especially as interest in sustainable materials – and the ability to access a comprehensive, up-to-date sustainable materials database grows among the product design community.

As noted in a related article on the subject, the software supports sustainable design by allowing designers to measure various environmental impacts of their design decisions - including carbon and energy consumption- and then making suggestions for comparable materials that would reduce the environmental impact of the design without compromising integrity.

This jointly developed sustainable materials design tool, which is intended to simplify the process for specifying suitable, safe and eco-friendly materials during the product design phase, is aimed at industrial designers, mechanical engineers and others seeking to create more sustainable products.

However, as noted in an earlier blog post on this topic, ultimately such technology could prove to be of tremendous value in not only helping companies to design more sustainable products, but to both anticipate and avoid the risks and penalties associated with the use of materials that might later be identified as hazardous or restricted, as well.

It’s all part of next-generation product design, a topic that is explored in greater detail in our upcoming research study, “Sustainability and the Product Lifecycle: A Report on the Opportunities, Challenges and Best Practices for Sustainable Product Design and Manufacturing.”

Do you have what it takes to design sustainable products? Or wish you did? Tell us more. By taking this short survey, you’ll be helping to shed light on this very important – and often highly debated – topic. Whether you’re a sustainability expert or just beginning your journey – your feedback is invaluable.

See also:

Autodesk Shows a Glimpse of New Green Materials Design Software

Is Sustainability Fundamentally a Materials Problem?

Eco-design Gets a Boost from Autodesk, Granta Partnership

Autodesk and Granta Partner to Help Enable Sustainable Product Design

Autodesk Introduces Free Sustainability Resources for Engineering Students, Educators

Product Safety: What’s Hidden in Your Supply Chain?

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) recently announced that it would be establishing a permanent presence in China. The reason? "Fifty-one percent of all the recalls that we do at the CPSC come out of China," says CSPC chairperson Inez Tenenbaum.

In particular, as noted in a recent article on the subject, the United States has been hit by a series of product safety scares, many of which originated in China, such as children's jewelry found to contain excessive levels of cadmium or the counterfeiting of electrical product parts.

Nearly fifty percent of all consumer products sold in the U.S. come from China and Korea, including 90 percent of all toys sold in the U.S. according to the CPSC. Translated? U.S. consumers, especially children, are potentially being put at risk every day as a result of faulty Chinese-made products.

Perhaps what is most worth noting here, however, is the need to insure that ALL products, regardless of origin – are safe – and that the materials and processes used in the manufacture of these products are free from toxic or dangerous chemicals, materials, or chemical by-products.

By supporting a safer, more sustainable approach to product design and manufacturing, such goals can be realized. While it is extremely valuable to have product safety specialists from organizations like the CPSC working with organizations like China’s consumer safety organization, AQSIZ to insure that faulty products are identified prior to distribution, the real focus needs to be on preventing product recalls in the first place by establishing and enforcing stricter product design and development safety guidelines, globally.

It’s all part of next-generation product design, a topic that is explored in greater detail in our upcoming research study, “Sustainability and the Product Lifecycle: A Report on the Opportunities, Challenges and Best Practices for Sustainable Product Design and Manufacturing.”

Do you have what it takes to design sustainable products? Or wish you did? Tell us more. By taking this short survey, you’ll be helping to shed light on this very important – and often highly debated – topic. Whether you’re a sustainability expert or just beginning your journey – your feedback is invaluable.

See also:

US product safety watchdog sets up shop in China

EPA Seeks to Identify Safer Chemical Alternatives, Promote Product Safety with New Assessment Tool

When it comes to safer, greener, more sustainable product design, one of the key challenges is how to effectively identify and reduce exposure to toxic chemicals – either contained within products, or released as by-products throughout the lifecycle of the product.

To address this challenge, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently announced the availability of a new tool to help businesses and other entities identify and use safer chemicals as part of its Design for the Environment (DfE) program -- the Chemical Alternatives Assessment tool.

As noted in a related article on the subject, Chemical Alternatives Assessments, or CAAs provide a methodology for informed substitution. Such assessments are intended to enable businesses to make the move from chemicals of concern to safer chemicals, by providing an in-depth comparison of potential human health and environmental impacts. Information derived from the CAAs is then combined with industry data on performance and cost to guide the choice of safer alternatives.

Such a move represents an important step along the way to supporting safer, more sustainable product design and manufacturing.

It’s all part of next-generation product design, a topic that is explored in greater detail in our upcoming research study, “Sustainability and the Product Lifecycle: A Report on the Opportunities, Challenges and Best Practices for Sustainable Product Design and Manufacturing.”

Do you have what it takes to design sustainable products? Or wish you did? Tell us more. By taking this short survey, you’ll be helping to shed light on this very important – and often highly debated – topic. Whether you’re a sustainability expert or just beginning your journey – your feedback is invaluable.

NOTE: For more information about alternatives assessments and choosing safer chemical substitutes, DfE recommends the following resources:

• Chemical Alternatives Assessments: Enabling Substitution to Safer Chemicals. Lavoie et al. Environmental Science and Technology Article ASAP. Nov. 9, 2010.
  
  This Feature article in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, explains DfE's approach to alternatives assessment, the steps in the process and examples of application of this assessment method.

• Alternatives Assessment Framework from the Lowell Center for Sustainable Production (PDF) (24 pp, 381K, About PDF)
  
  The Lowell Center for Sustainable Production created this Framework in 2006 as a first step in defining the methodology for identifying and evaluating safer alternatives.

• Alternatives Assessments conducted by states from Massachusetts Toxics Use Reduction Institute
  
  Massachusetts Toxics Use Reduction Institute created this database to enable the exchange of information and resources between state pollution prevention providers and regulatory agency representatives.

• DfE Criteria for Safer Chemical Ingredients and DfE Standard for Safer Cleaning Products
  
  These documents define by component class the characteristics and toxicity thresholds for ingredients that are acceptable in DfE-labeled products.

• CleanGredients®
  
  This database of safer chemicals supports DfE's Safer Product Labeling Program by providing a list of chemicals, arranged by component class, that meet the DfE Criteria.

• Green Screen for Safer Chemicals
  
  Developed by Clean Production Action, an environmental non-governmental organization, the Green Screen complements the DfE Alternatives Assessment methodology. The Green Screen is designed to aid in the selection of safer alternative chemicals.

See also:

Workplace Safety News

EPA website

Will Sustainability Usher In The Next “Golden Era of Design?”

Will sustainability usher in the next “Golden Era of Design?” It seems that industrial designer Yves Béhar believes it will. In a recent New York Times interview, Béhar offers this view:

"Sustainability calls for a complete overhaul of every sector of production. That means that in the next 10 to 20 years, every process, every factory, every logistics system, every product, every service is going to have to be completely rethought from a sustainability standpoint. It's an incredible opportunity. I don't think there has been a similar opportunity since the end of the Second World War and the transformation of industry from military to consumer."

Is Béhar’s thinking too radical? Is it too much to imagine that in the next decade, we can expect to see dramatic changes in the way that products are conceived and designed, manufactured and delivered? Will manufacturing, by design, be less wasteful and more environmentally-friendly? Will products increasingly be more energy-efficient, and be characterized by more responsible use/reuse of materials? In general – will products be designed with more than “faster, better, cheaper” metrics in mind? In the coming decade, will design decisions increasingly take into account environmental and social impacts, as well as profitability?

Perhaps the best way to respond to these questions is to point to a number of recent developments that promise to pave the way to more sustainable product design and manufacturing:

• At its very core, product design is undergoing a transformation. Conventional ways of viewing and analyzing product performance are being challenged. New approaches to product design and development are being introduced, and increasingly, sustainability – taking the path that quality did decades ago – will be viewed as a design requirement. Within the coming year, even classic textbooks such as Ulrich and Eppinger’s Product Design and Development textbook will begin to reflect this change and will include new chapters on materials selection, product lifecycle analysis and more.
  Engineering software and services are evolving to support sustainable product design. From digital prototyping/CAD (computer-aided design) to PDM (product data management) and PLM (product lifecycle management), engineering software is being updated to support sustainable design principles, or paired with third party applications that will. Sustainability is taking on a new and important role - new modules are being developed to simplify the sustainable design process, and new tools to aid in such tasks as materials selection, "up-front" lifecycle assessment, and carbon/water impact analysis are being introduced.
• Market demand for safer, greener, more sustainable products is growing – both at the consumer-level and by industry. Both consumers and industry are becoming more aware of the health and safety risks posed by such factors as chemical toxicity, and as a result, are increasingly opting for safer, more sustainable alternatives. Product recalls have also heightened awareness of the potential risks posed by the presence of "hidden" hazardous substances or toxic materials originating from a supplier, driving the need for supply chain transparency. At the same time, few are willing to pay a price premium for safer, less toxic, more eco-friendly products, making it necessary for manufacturers to be able to – as a given – develop greener, safer, more sustainable products, cost-effectively.

It’s all part of next-generation product design, a topic that is explored in greater detail in our upcoming research study, “Sustainability and the Product Lifecycle: A Report on the Opportunities, Challenges and Best Practices for Sustainable Product Design and Manufacturing.”

Do you have what it takes to design sustainable products? Or wish you did? Tell us more. By taking this short survey, you’ll be helping to shed light on this very important – and often highly debated – topic. Whether you’re a sustainability expert or just beginning your journey – your feedback is invaluable.

See also:

Yves Behar on Sustainable Design, Predictions for 2011

Yves Béhar of Fuseproject on Design With Grand Ambitions

MIT’s SourceMap: The Future of Supply Chain Transparency and Accountability?

Sustainable product design – which emphasizes the importance of designing responsibly using eco-friendly materials and minimizing environmental impact – is enough of a challenge for many product designers. It requires a new way of thinking about design – and a new way of measuring a product’s success beyond conventional price/performance metrics.

At the same time, sustainable product design also requires manufacturers to be ever watchful of what may wind up in a product, from a supplier located millions of miles away. Indeed, understanding and addressing the challenges of managing sustainability across the supply chain, as well as across the product lifecycle, is no small feat.

But thanks to MIT’s Leonard Bonanni, the creator of SourceMap, the task of tracking, measuring and, in general, comprehending the environmental impact of a product across its supply chain, is getting easier. Originally conceived as a PhD project, SourceMap offers a user-generated visualization of a product’s supply chain and resultant carbon footprint.

It’s a compelling concept – one that, as a recent article describes it, “represents the future of environmentally friendly consumption, one based on transparency and accountability.” Based on its ability to provide a visual map of a product's supply chain, SourceMap just may accomplish this goal, and provide a guide for companies and consumers that are seeking more sustainable solutions.

As noted in an excerpt from the article, Bonnani’s original mission was to help consumers who wanted to be able to do so, make more sustainable choices:

“Basically,” explained Bonanni, “the idea came from the fact that people want to make sustainable choices, but there’s no place for them to go if they want to investigate products and services.” The site (www.sourcemap.org), then, acts as a “public good mission to teach sustainability and understand supply chains.”

To get the project off the ground, Bonanni and his advisers at MIT’s Center for Future Civic Media, Hiroshi Ishii and Chris Csikszentmihalyi, first focused on breaking down select commodities’ trade routes, which can often be quite convoluted. Electronics, for example, can contain components from over ten countries. Thus, Bonanni and his team started by reverse engineering products to track their origins, often by simply calling companies to find a certain item’s origins. Then, with a trail mapped out, says Bonanni, “I needed to break the problem into environmental impact,” like how much carbon shipping and packing sends in the atmosphere.

Of course Bonanni knew we live in a digital world, and wanted to create a visual guide for an easily distracted public. To that end, he reached out to graphic designer David Zorg, who drew maps laying out a product’s trade route and emissions. Now customers can look at the guide for a Giant TCR ‘04 bicycle, and see its 21 components result in a carbon footprint of 82.01 kg, or Apple’s iPod, which has seven assembly spots, and emits 9.84 kg of carbon along the way.

Three years later, SourceMap, a forthcoming 501(c)3 still funded by MIT grants, has evolved into more than just a research product aimed at consumers. It’s a resource for companies, as well.

It’s all part of next-generation product design, a topic that is explored in greater detail in our upcoming research study, “Sustainability and the Product Lifecycle: A Report on the Opportunities, Challenges and Best Practices for Sustainable Product Design and Manufacturing.”

Do you have what it takes to design sustainable products? Or wish you did? Tell us more. By taking this short survey, you’ll be helping to shed light on this very important – and often highly debated – topic. Whether you’re a sustainability expert or just beginning your journey – your feedback is invaluable.

See also:

Mapping Carbon Emissions, SourceMap Paves Eco-Conscious Markets

Is Sustainability Fundamentally a Materials Problem?

New product design expert, Steven Eppinger would argue that it is. Eppinger, coauthor of the popular textbook, Product Design and Development and a professor of management science and innovation at the MIT Sloan School of Management, takes the view that “the secret [to sustainability] is to focus on materials.”

Why? While manufacturers often tend to focus on the sustainability goals and objectives that they can achieve at the operations level – energy efficiency, waste reduction, water conservation, etc. – there are real opportunities to cut costs, reduce environmental impact, and drive innovation – during the product design phase, according to Eppinger.

As noted in a recent article on the subject, Eppinger offers the following view:

“The way to think of environmental sustainability when it comes to design and product innovation is by framing it as a materials problem. It’s about the materials that we use in the products and the materials that are used to run the processes that make the products. The reason that product design has a big impact is that’s where the materials decisions are made.

If you want to have a product that uses only materials that can be recycled, you’ve got to rethink the product. You’ve got to change the design, which means new specifications and perhaps some difficult technical trade offs to deal with. If you want to use materials that are recycled in the first place instead of always using virgin materials, you’ve got to design the product differently so that can happen. If you want to reduce the use of packaging materials in operations, you’ve got to design the product differently so that it needs less packaging or no packaging; if you want to reduce the use of coatings and finishes, you’ve got to design the product so that it works properly and looks great without coatings and finishes. If you want to sell a product that your consumer can recycle, you’ve got to design the product to be easily disassembled and separated into available recycling streams.”

Ok. So it’s important to make smart design decisions with respect to materials during the product design phase in order to drive innovation and achieve sustainability goals – the question is, how can this be accomplished most easily? Are there capabilities built-in to today’s product design tools to help facilitate smart design decisions with respect to materials? Are there new tools on the horizon?

The short answer is a qualified, “yes.” The tools aren’t quite there yet, but they’re coming. Users can also expect to see a greater emphasis on not only sustainable materials selection but sustainable materials management in next-generation design tools. In fact, Autodesk's recently announced partnership with Granta Design, a organization which offers expertise in materials software, materials data, and materials databases, promises to take product design and development one step closer to this goal.

So, let’s review. As Eppinger summarizes it:

How can environmental concerns drive product design and innovation?

• Frame design and product innovation for environmental sustainability as a materials problem.
• How much material is used is less important than what material is used.
• Don’t try to eliminate environmental impacts all at once. Try to get a little better each time you design a product.

It’s all part of next-generation product design, a topic that is explored in greater detail in our upcoming research study, “Sustainability and the Product Lifecycle: A Report on the Opportunities, Challenges and Best Practices for Sustainable Product Design and Manufacturing.”

Do you have what it takes to design sustainable products? Or wish you did? Tell us more. By taking this short survey, you’ll be helping to shed light on this very important – and often highly debated – topic. Whether you’re a sustainability expert or just beginning your journey – your feedback is invaluable.

See also:

How Sustainability Fuels Design Innovation

Do You Have What It Takes to Design Sustainable Products?

Eco-design Gets a Boost from Autodesk, Granta Partnership

Nike Offers a FREE Gift to Product Designers

No, it’s not free merchandise – but for product designers with an interest in designing with sustainability in mind – it just might be the perfect gift. What is it? A design tool created to help designers make better-informed decisions during the earliest stages of product design – when it matters most.

More specifically, the Environmental Apparel Design Tool reportedly gives each design an overall score, and then allows designers to tweak specific aspects of their work to improve the score, according to Nike. Built over the course of seven years, and at a cost of $6 million, it’s hard to believe that the company is making a version of the tool available for public use – but it is.

And, it’s available here: www.nikebiz.com/responsibility/nikeenvironmentaldesigntool.

Designers can also register for upcoming webinars on the Environmental Apparel Design Tool at: www.nikebiz.com/responsibility/nikeenvironmentaldesigntool.

How does it work? According to a recent article on the subject, designers simply “plug in what materials they're using, how much recycled or organic content they have, any treatments being done, how much waste will be left over from cutting the design out, and some other details, and the tool gives the design a score, which can fall into one of the following categories:  'needs improvement,'  'good,'  'better,'  or  'best.'"  Sounds almost too easy. Then, again, perhaps a great deal of effort was put into the tool in order to make it easy to use. Keep in mind, that by testing the tool out, and providing your feedback, you can make it even easier to use, and more useful.

But it gets even better. In addition to the Environmental Apparel Design Tool, Nike will also be releasing its Footwear Design Tool, Material Assessment Tool and Water Assessment Tool in 2011.

Now, really – what more could you ask for? These tools are free, good for the environment, and developed to help designers create better, more environmentally-friendly products. So, if you’re involved in designing footwear or apparel, go ahead – treat yourself! The Environmental Apparel Design Tool just might be one of the best presents you get this year. It can help you design more sustainable products and help make the world a better place!

Do you have what it takes to design sustainable products? Or wish you did? Tell us more. By taking this short survey, you’ll be helping to shed light on this very important – and often highly debated – topic. Whether you’re a sustainability expert or just beginning your journey – your feedback is invaluable.

It’s all part of next-generation product design, a topic that is explored in greater detail in our upcoming research study, “Sustainability and the Product Lifecycle: A Report on the Opportunities, Challenges and Best Practices for Sustainable Product Design and Manufacturing.”

See also:

Nike Shares Environmental Scoring Tool For Product Design

Nike’s Six Million Environmental Design Tool. Now Yours. For Free.