Design for Environment
This strategy is based on a methodology and experiences from a project within
the European railway industry. The experiences from implementing this EPI based
Design for Environment methodology is therefore from the railway industry.
The strategy is suitable for the companies within the railway industry as there
are both strong customer as well as legal environmental requirements, which
forces the companies to deal with environmental issues. One sector specific
feature is that the products are designed and manufactured per contract giving
low production series compared to many other types of products. The major part
of the companies have also in their policies declared that they are working
towards sustainability. This strategy provides a methodology to increase the
environmental performance of a product and facilitates the measurement of
performance in order to verify that requirements are met already in the design
phase.
However, data acquisition and consensus processes are time
consuming and costly processes. It is important to obtain right
data quality and make sure that the user of the EPIs, material
list etc. agree on and understand them. Ongoing work within
railway industry is to agree on common definitions and harmonize
requirements. The common list of EPIs and a common material list
will be maintained within a Rail Eco-Procurement board and both
lists are to be brought to a standardization process within the
railway industry. Furthermore, a potential risk with using this
strategy is high costs for implementing it. Avoiding future
costs is however the driving force for using this strategy. The
costs for implementing the strategy can be reduced through collaboration between many
companies sharing the costs for common information. The
pioneering work performed within the railway industry does also
reduce the costs for implementing this strategy within other
industries. Business value
Including environmental aspects and requirements in product development and
design processes supports industry in developing safe, energy- and resource
efficient products. This could increase the customer value for a product
presumed the benefits are communicated to the customers in a credible and
understandable way.
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