A multi-objective tolerance optimization approach for economic, ecological, and social sustainability

Abstract

Sustainable design requires simultaneous consideration of the economic, ecological, and social consequences of design decisions. The selection of dimensional tolerances and materials are two such decisions that have impacts in all three of these areas. This article presents an optimization framework along with generalized models for considering sustainability and understanding how different aspects of sustainability may trade off with one another. A mobile phone design is used as a case study to demonstrate the strengths of the approach when varying manufacturing tolerance and material choice, and the results include three-dimensional Pareto frontiers illustrating the design tradeoffs.