Decision support tool to derive sustainable product configurations as a basis for conceptual design

Abstract

Developing sustainable products requires a thorough understanding of the product and its environmental, economic and social impact. In particular decision-making in conceptual design has a large influence on sustainability performance of the final product but still remains widely unsupported. Hence, an Engineering Decision Support System (EDSS) and a corresponding method is proposed which assists system engineers in evaluating and comparing various product concepts in early design phases. In this paper the EDSS concept is elaborated and demonstrated on the example of a pedelec drive system.