A product model to capture and reuse ecodesign knowledge

Abstract

Ecodesign is the improvement of the environmental performance of products or services throughout their whole lifecycle. Because there is less design freedom in the late stages of the design process, it is assumed that if the environmental constraint is introduced early, the designers would develop a product that would have a better environmental performance. Thus, case-based reasoning is proposed as a strategy to incorporate ecodesign early in the design process. The paper shows the investigation about the different possibilities of capturing information during the product development process. The idealized model to capture information called Core Product Model extension for environmental evaluation (CPMe³) is presented. This formal model would allow capturing the data from the whole product’s lifecycle with a link to the environmental evaluation.