Integrating sustainability in product requirements

Abstract

Trade-offs between sustainability criteria and engineering design variables can lead to sub-optimisations and costly short-term priorities. This study explores how sustainability requirements can be identified and integrated in product requirements to guide strategic and tactical decisions in product development including sustainability perspectives. Literature review and action research resulted in a proposed systematic approach that: define sustainability criteria and indicators; use correlation analysis with QFD; and adds identified specific sustainability requirements to requirement list.