Design for Environment (DfE) - Important Tool Towards An Environmental Efficient Product Development

Due to the fact that the requirements on the business environment of a company becomes more and more complex and dynamic, especially in the automotive industry driven by new regulations like the European car take back regulation (EU directive on end-of-life (EoL) vehicles) and product responsibility, effective tools and procedures along the complete product development process from research to design must be installed.

Design for Recycling (DfR) and Design for Environment (DfE) tools can help to reduce the effort for environmental evaluation because of their direct integration in the designers workflow. As DFE is not standardized, it should be based on the reliable information, for example LCA data.

A connection between LCA and DfE offers the possibility to integrate environmental evaluation with tolerable effort directly in the design process while keeping the transparency and reliability of LCA and fulfilling the legislative requirements for the end of life phase.