Assessing and Visualising Sustainability Value of Product Concepts in Early Design Stage for Strategic Decision Making
Paper in proceeding, 2025

Integrating sustainability into early product design stage is crucial for companies to navigate complexity effectively. Based on a long-term research collaboration with an aerospace product manufacturer, this paper introduces an improved prototype of the Sustainability Criteria and Product Life-Cycle Data Simulation digital decision-support tool for visualising and comparing the sustainability implications of product design concepts. Unlike existing tools, it allows quantitative comparisons in early design stages and is based on overarching socio-ecological sustainability principles and a backcasting perspective. A sustainability merit score for each product design concept is derived from selected indicators and sustainability criteria. The paper also reports on the results from a focus group evaluation study and discusses the value and challenges faced when developing this type of tool, including accuracy, data availability limitations, and the dilemma of indicator weighting.

sustainable design

sustainability indicators

industrial case

decision support tool

early design stage

Author

Sze Yin Kwok

Blekinge Tekniska Högskola, BTH

Sophie Isaksson Hallstedt

Blekinge Tekniska Högskola, BTH

Chalmers, Industrial and Materials Science, Product Development

Johanna W. Nylander

GKN Aerospace Services

Procedia CIRP

22128271 (ISSN)

Vol. 136 1014-1020

35th CIRP Design Conference, CIRP Design 2025
Patras, Greece,

Subject Categories (SSIF 2025)

Production Engineering, Human Work Science and Ergonomics

Other Mechanical Engineering

Applied Mechanics

DOI

10.1016/j.procir.2025.08.172

More information

Latest update

9/26/2025