Decision-making support for sustainable product creation

A satisfactory multiobjective design that incorporates physical performance as well as sustainability is necessary from a global environmental protection perspective. For obtaining sustainable lifecycles, decision making in the early phases of the design process, considering multiple sources of uncertainty, is important. Previously, we proposed a preference set-based design (PSD) by Inoue et al. (2010) [16] method, which enables a flexible and robust design under various sources of uncertainty while capturing the designer's preference based on his/her knowledge or experience. The present study focuses on a decision-making support for sustainable product creation in the early phases of the design process considering the various design uncertainties. We investigate different officially accepted sustainability indicators and identify the ones that are related to the product development process by considering the physical performance and sustainability of the products concurrently. Thereafter, the proposed method is applied to a multiobjective design problem. This paper discusses the applicability of PSD as a decision-making support method for sustainable development using the design of an alternator as an example. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.