Development of Method for Eco-Design
50. RTU Studentu zinātniskās un tehniskās konferences materiāli 2009
Māra Rēpele, Gatis Bažbauers

In searching for ecodesign solutions, it is vital to understand a product‘s impact on the environment, in order to define the relationship between specific design solutions and their environmental impact throughout the product’s full life cycles. Smaller and middle sized businesses often lack sufficient resources to involve an environmental specialist in the design of a product. Therefore, an easy solution could be an expert system that could, at least in part, provide necessary ecodesign competency. An expert system is most often a computer program that attempts to take the place of one or several human experts. The program contains specialized knowledge in data or formula form. This kind of programming is usually placed in a unique domain, and this is a widely known use of artificial intelligence. The target audience for this system is the electronics market. This is the European economy’s most important sector, in which smaller and mid-sized firms are significant innovators and leaders in new product ideas. The goal is to create an expert system that facilitates material selection and provides guidelines for operating within legal restrictions concerning materials. The program helps users evaluate conformance to the requirements of Europe’s ecolabel “Ecoflower”, which relate to the choice of materials used in the manufacturing process. The new ecodesign method is developed in the MS Office Excel environment. It is simple and user-friendly. Its use requires no specialized computer knowledge nor ecodesign skills. By answering a series of “yes” or “no” questions, the program evaluates a product’s environmental impact by focusing on f the materials used in every phase of a product’s life. The program also gives ecodesign suggestions which are appropriate for the analyzed product. If the used materials’ type and mass are known, the user can compare and choose more environmentally friendly materials, consider the feasibility of a second use of materials, and also decide which group of materials used creates a larger impact on the environment, and how, in substituting one material for another, the product’s entire environmental impact is improved. Although the completed methodology is meant for electric and electronic product analysis, it is still relatively universal and can be used by other product manufacturers who wish to analyze a product’s material impact on the environment as well as it can be used as teaching material for ecodesign courses at universities.


Keywords
Ecodesign, energy using products, expert system, materials

Rēpele, M., Bažbauers, G. Development of Method for Eco-Design. In: 50. RTU Studentu zinātniskās un tehniskās konferences materiāli, Latvia, Rīga, 23-24 April, 2009. Rīga: RTU Izdevniecība, 2009, pp.207-207. ISBN 9789984326535.

Publication language
Latvian (lv)
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