Material criticality assessment in early phases of sustainable product development
Journal article, 2017

© 2017 Elsevier Ltd Improving structural performance of products is often realized by introducing increasingly advanced and complex materials as well as material combinations. What material to use in products is decided in the early product development phases and has a decisive impact for manufacturing, maintenance and end-of-life. A particular challenge is that the decisions need to be made upfront, where information of the forthcoming product is limited. This paper presents an early product development method to assess the criticality of alloy materials from a resource availability- and sustainability perspective. The method distinguishes itself from previous studies that focus on element criticality on a country level. The method is used to characterize and analyze the criticality of alloys in a three-step process that aims to support product design teams selecting what material alloy to use in early phases of design. It provides a proactive and systematic approach related to critical materials to avoid potential future problems on a long-term basis. The method presented has been developed in an action research-based approach in an aerospace company where a product design team validated and evaluated the material criticality method. The generic nature of the method is likely to be applicable not only to aerospace companies but also to other industries using advanced alloys. An important finding from applying the method in the company case was the clear link between long term business impact and sustainability performance.

Sustainable product development

Eco-design

Early design phase

Material criticality

Decision support

Author

S.I. Hallstedt

Blekinge Tekniska Högskola, BTH

Ola Isaksson

Chalmers, Product and Production Development, Product Development

Journal of Cleaner Production

0959-6526 (ISSN)

Vol. 161 40-52

Subject Categories

Production Engineering, Human Work Science and Ergonomics

Driving Forces

Sustainable development

Areas of Advance

Production

DOI

10.1016/j.jclepro.2017.05.085

More information

Latest update

4/6/2018 1