Perspectives on Sustainable Product Design Methodology Focused on Local Communities

Abstract

The next generation of eco-products, known as sustainable products, must address social concerns as well as satisfy economic and environmental criteria. One of the social aspects of a product is its contribution to the local community. The main driving force of global economic growth currently comes from emerging countries, such as China and India, and it will move to developing countries in the future. To support the development of sustainable products in these countries, a research agenda is presented for establishing a locally oriented sustain-able product design methodology. Also, a concept of an extended function-structure analysis method based on a combination of reverse engineering and field observa-tion is proposed. In this method, the scope of analysis is extended in terms of space and time to understand comprehensively the explicit and implicit site-specific characteristics of a product and its life cycle.