Journal of Cleaner Production 18 (2010) 833842

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Journal of Cleaner Production

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Integration of ECQFD and LCA for sustainable product design

S. Vinodh*, Gopinath Rathod
Department of Production Engineering, National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirappalli-620 015, Tamil Nadu, India

a r t i c l e i n f o

a b s t r a c t

Article history:
Received 27 October 2009
Received in revised form
23 December 2009
Accepted 31 December 2009
Available online 14 January 2010

The purpose of this paper is to report a research carried out for ensuring sustainable product design by
the integration of environmentally conscious quality function deployment (ECQFD) and life cycle
assessment (LCA) approaches. Sustainability refers to the capability of an organization to maximize
resource efciency for ensuring clean and green atmosphere. The sustainable product development
model integrated with ECQFD and LCA has been used for ensuring sustainable product design. The
implementation study was carried out by gathering data from a single manufacturing organization. The
implementation experiences indicated that methodology of sustainable product design is practically
feasible and compatible. The ndings and contributions of this research would be useful to the majority
of the organizations situated in the world.
2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords:
Sustainable manufacturing
Quality function deployment
Environmentally conscious quality function
deployment
Life cycle assessment
Sustainable product
Costing

1. Introduction
Sustainability is recognized as an important concept by modern
organizations for survival in the competitive world (Bevilacqua
et al., 2007). Those organizations are forced to adopt practices that
are designed to maintain environment safety and minimize energy
utilization. Sustainable organizations reduce production cost and
prevent environmental problems for maintaining clean and green
atmosphere (Senthilkumaran et al., 2001). Green system integrates
product and process design issues with production planning and
control to identify, quantify, assess and manage the ow of environmental waste with the ultimate goal of reducing environmental
impact (Azzone and Noci, 1996). Green system tries to maximize
resource efciency for the production of sustainable components.
Sustainability is the critical intersection between factors like
manufacturing and product design practices and the environmental issues and concerns (Rusinko, 2007). Prevention of environmental problems tries to reduce the total life cycle cost of the
products and thereby ensuring sustainability (Kaebernick et al.,
2002). For the past one decade, the need for introducing environmental requirements into design and development of products is
becoming a vital issue. The question of applying how to infuse

* Corresponding author. Tel.: 919952709119 (mobile).

E-mail addresses: vinodh_sekar82@yahoo.com (S. Vinodh), gopinath.rathod@
gmail.com (G. Rathod).
0959-6526/$ see front matter 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2009.12.024

environmental criteria into product design and how to compare

environmental requirements with traditional design requirements
is gaining vital importance (Brent and Labuschagne, 2004).
Current product design practices are based on traditional cost/
prot models with a focus of achieving high quality at low cost and
high prot. Environmental requirements generate additional
design constraints and increasing costs (Kaebernick et al., 2002). In
normal product design practice, environmental awareness is done
later in the product development process and is not integrated with
existing activities. The integration of environmental requirements
into every stage of product development leads to the development
of sustainable paradigm for manufacturing (Conteras et al., 2009).
Identication of new environmental features of product that
possess potential to improve overall quality of a product increases
additional market potential and gains (Soriano and Kaebernick,
2000). In this research project, some of the tools of sustainable
product development such as environmentally conscious quality
function deployment (ECQFD) and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has
been used. The case study has been carried out in an electronics
switches manufacturing organization located in India.
2. Literature review
Dr. Yoji Akao is regarded as the father of QFD and he has
contributed a widely used denition of QFD (Bestereld et al.,
2004). QFD provides the need for translating consumer demands
to appropriate technical requirements during each stage of

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S. Vinodh, G. Rathod / Journal of Cleaner Production 18 (2010) 833842

a product/process development (Sun et al., 2003). It enables the

development of customer friendly and high quality products. QFD
has its origin at Mitsubishis Kobe Shipyard in Japan (Pun, 2006).
QFD emphasizes quality in the design process to prevent the
likelihood of defects at the early stages thereby reducing cost and
improving productivity (Akao and Mazur, 2003; Chan and Wu,
2002). Other benets of QFD include reduced design changes,
increased market share and improved market quality (Akao and
Mazur, 2003; Chan and Wu, 2002).
Some researchers have been working on incorporating environmental aspects into QFD. Pun (2006) have presented the
determinants of environmentally-responsible operations and suggested Green QFD as one of the tools for environmentally-responsible operations. Cristofari et al. (1996) introduced the concept of
Green QFD by integrating QFD with a life cycle approach to product
development. This is useful for evaluating different product
concepts, and deploys environmental requirements throughout the
development process. Zhang et al. (1999) developed a method
called GQFD-II which includes the integration of LCA and life cycle
costing (LCC) into QFD. They integrated LCC into QFD matrices and
suggested the deployment of quality, environmental and cost
requirements throughout the entire product development process
to evaluate different product concepts. Masui et al. (2003) presented a concept called QFDE in which QFD has been applied to
environmentally-conscious design. Sakao (2009) has presented
a QFD centered design methodology for environmentally-conscious
product design. He combined LCA, QFDE and Theory of Inventive
Problem Solving (TRIZ) and applied the combination to a hair dryer
to effectively support the product planning and conceptual design
stages.
Sun et al. (2003) have presented the approach of material
grouping for simplied product LCA. They have presented
a simplied method to evaluate the environmental impact associated with the material selection of a product, as a part of the
simplied LCA approach. Based on the analysis of the materials
physical, mechanical and environmental properties, materials are
classied into groups according to the type of material and their
environmental performance. Material based environmental impact
drivers (DM) are dened for each group. By mapping materials into
the index of DM, the material based environmental impact of
a design alternative can be evaluated on the basis of a few material
groups. By replacing the detailed material LCA scores with the
index of DM, designers can have a timely assessment on the
material based environmental impacts with acceptable accuracy.
Summarized information on life cycle inventory analysis is also
provided for each material group. Gungor and Gupta (1999) have
presented the concept of Environmentally Conscious Manufacturing and Product Recovery (ECMPRO). ECMPRO involves
integrating environmental thinking into new product development
including design, material selection, manufacturing processes and
delivery of the product to the consumers, plus the end-of-life
management of the product after its useful life. Senthilkumaran

Literature review on sustainable product

development

Identification of tools/techniques for sustainable

product development

Identification of a suitable organization for

conducting case study

Application of tools/techniques for ensuring

sustainable product development

Derivation of inferences
Fig. 1. Research methodology.

et al. (2001) have presented Life Cycle Environmental Cost Analysis

(LCECA) model to include eco-cost into the total cost of the products. LCECA model identies the feasible alternative for costeffective, eco-friendly parts/products. This mathematical model of
LCECA denes the relationships between the total cost of products
and the various eco-costs concerned with the life cycle of the
products. Sousa (2002) has presented the concept of appropriate
LCA of product concept using learning systems. They have used
learning surrogate LCA method which is an alternate approach
which is capable of deriving results of LCA during early concept
design stage. Kaebernick et al. (2003) have presented the integration of environmental requirements throughout the entire lifetime
of a product. They presented the concept of an approach to product
development, based on a paradigm for sustainable manufacturing.
Four examples of methodologies and decision tools are discussed,
representing the most important sources of environmental impacts
of a product. The emphasis lies on the integrating concept rather
than on the details of the methodologies. Kumazawa and Kobayashi
(2003) have presented the evaluation of the business model of
vacuum cleaner taking into account the closed material ow cycle.
The feasibility of sustainable global system is examined from the
view points of material and cash ow. They have performed
simulation studies based on a discrete simulation software visual
SLAM. Park and Seo (2003) have presented a new appropriate LCA
methodology for the product concept by grouping products
according to their environmental characteristics and by mapping
product attributes into environmental impact driver (EID) index.
The relationship is statistically veried by exploring the correlation
between total impact indicator and energy impact category. Then,
a neural network approach is developed to predict an approximate
LCA of grouping products in conceptual design. Some of the frontier

Table 1
ECQFD phase I for rotary switches.
Voice of customers

Engineering metrics (EM)

Customer weights Numbers of types of materials Physical lifetime Rate of recycled material Biodegradability Insulation strength

Less material usage

Easy to transport and retain
Less energy consumption
Easy to disassemble
Harmless to living environment
Raw score
Relative weight

5
5
5
3
3

5
3

2
3
3

3
49
0.177

40
0.144

5
4
4
3
66
0.239

3
4
5
3
4
81
0.293

2
3
3

40
0.144

S. Vinodh, G. Rathod / Journal of Cleaner Production 18 (2010) 833842

835

Table 2
ECQFD phase II for rotary switches.
Engineering Metrics

Phase I relative weight

Number of types of materials

Physical lifetime
Rate of recycled material
Biodegradability
Insulation strength
Raw score
Relative weight

0.177
0.144
0.239
0.293
0.144

Component characteristics
Knob/Handle

Knob shaft

Front assembly
2

0.72
0.148

5
1.44
0.297

institutes and countries involved in the development of sustainable

product design methodology tools include TU Delft Industrial
Design Engineering and Leiden (Zamagni et al., 2008).
Robert (2000) has presented a general framework to plan for
sustainability. He proposed metrics for measuring and monitoring the activities for sustainable development function as LCA,
ecological footprinting (EF), and Factor X. The author has addressed
environmental management system (EMS), like ISO 14001 or
EMAS, as an administrative vehicle that should systematically align
a rms specic outcomes, activities and metrics with a general
framework for sustainability. Nagel and Tomiyama (2004) have
presented Design of environment in the context of design of
manufacturing systems. They have outlined the air emission and
waste prole of 25 manufacturing system of printed boards. They
have presented a concept when a manufacturing system uses less
resource and generate less waste and emissions and the environmental balance could be measured and managed with information
technology, the system becomes sustainable and intelligent. Anityasari et al. (2005) have presented the concept of re-use of old
products as the most environmentally friendly strategy. They have
presented an integrated technical and economic model to evaluate
the re-usability of the products. In order to handle uncertainties,
Monte Carlo simulation is utilized. Lee et al. (2006) have presented
a conceptual framework for managing the end-of-life information
and design information in the assistance of designing products
with better environmental performance from a system perspective.
They have formalized and structured Integrated Manufacturing and
Product Service System (IMPSS) to close the product life cycle
management loop for easier information sharing with design stage.
Andersson et al. (1998) have combined the concept of sustainability principles and the methodology of LCA to achieve an operational tool that incorporates sustainability in product
development and strategic planning. They outlined the structure of
LCA to emphasize aspects and parameters often omitted from
traditional LCA and concluded that LCA is well suited for screening
analysis. Benedetto and Klemes (2009) have presented an Environmental Performance Strategy Map for LCA to analyze environmental impacts on a wide perspective with reference to a product
system and the related environmental and economic impacts. This
graphical map allows combining the main environmental indicators with the Sustainable Environmental Performance Indicator as
a single measure for sustainability of a given option so that
comparison of different options for strategic decision-making

Mounting plate

Contact stages

Cover plate

5
5

5
2.325
0.480

0.354
0.073

purposes can be enhanced and facilitated by the use of this indicator. Daniel and Hesamedin (2009) have developed a concept
called Life Cycle Phases (LCP) families, to develop reference ranges
for environmental impact of new products as benchmarking with
previous environmental information and proved that LCA is useful
in comparing the environmental impact of alternatives, LCP or parts
in a product. The proposed concept develops a new product which
can be catalogued as environmentally better or worse than
a percentage of its competitors, depending on what position it
occupies in its LCP-family. Krozer and Vis (1998) has proposed an
LCA as quantitative tool for assessment of environmental impacts of
products and services. They presented a framework of the methodology, functional unit denition, inventory, impact assessment
and evaluation which can all be considerably improved. Conteras
et al. have used LCA to compare the environmental impacts of four
alternatives for exploitation of byproducts from cane sugar
production. They have compared the following four alternatives:
i) conventional sugar production process with three other alternatives; ii) waste water, lter cake and ashes for substitution of
synthetic fertilizers used for cane sugar production; iii) use of lter
cake and waste water for biogas production and iv) an integrated
alcohol and biogas production unit adjoining the sugarcane
production unit.
Ijomah (2007) have presented a process of bringing used
products to a like-new functional state with warranty to match is
being regarded as a vital strategy in waste management and environmentally conscious management. They presented an outline of
the elements of the re-manufacturing concept to improve the
robustness of design-for-re-manufacturing (DFRem). Rusinko
(2007) has presented an evaluation of environmentally sustainable
manufacturing practice and their impact on competitive outcomes.
They have presented an exploratory study of the relationship
between specic environmentally sustainable manufacturing
practices and specic competitive outcomes in a US based
commercial carpet industry. Sita and Subramania (2007) have
presented the derivation of manufacturing enterprise to internalize
environmental aspects of their business to meet local environmental regulations and to conform to emerging international
standards and best practices. They presented the concept of using
the limits between business functions of a manufacturing enterprise and the environmental dimensions of the businesses of
a simplied service oriented software model to deliver information
on the life cycle environmental impacts of manufacturing products.

Table 3
ECQFD phase III of rotary switches for option I.
Engineering metrics

Phase I relative Component characteristics

Score Improvement rate of
weight
engineering. metrics
Knob/Handle Knob shaft Front assembly Mounting plate Contact stages Cover plate

Number of types of materials

Physical lifetime
Rate of recycled material
Biodegradability
Insulation strength

0.177
0.144
0.239
0.293
0.144

0
5
0
0
5

0.000
0.333
0.000
0.000
0.500

836

S. Vinodh, G. Rathod / Journal of Cleaner Production 18 (2010) 833842

Table 4
ECQFD phase III of rotary switches for option II.
Engineering metrics

Phase I relative Component characteristics

Score Improvement rate of
weight
engineering. metrics
Knob/Handle Knob shaft Front assembly Mounting plate Contact stages Cover plate

Number of types of materials

Physical lifetime
Rate of recycled material
Biodegradability
Insulation strength

0.177
0.144
0.239
0.293
0.144

2
5
0
0
0

Gehin et al. (2008) have presented a strategy called End of Life (EoL)
to assess product EoL process, which would be protable for an
enterprise given the business model in place. They integrated
constraints from EoL strategies into the early phases of design as an
important aspect that needs to be improved by combining this idea
with principles from concurrent engineering to develop design aids
which permits designers to compare their products to Remanufacturable Product Proles. Chen and Wang (2008) have presented
CIMSMINER that combines the data mining with CIMS (Computer
Integrated Manufacturing Systems) and instructs its objectives,
model, physical architecture and methods. Considering the characteristics of re-manufacturing of automotive products, the CIMSMINER has been used to derive the information concourse together
and obtain the data mining results to enable the improvement of
products. ECQFD and LCA integration enables the inducement of
environmental criteria into traditional product design process as
well as the cost model integrating production and environmental
costs and the technical feasibility of determining the status of an
old product for re-use.
The research gap observed based on the literature review is that
the practical feasibility of integrating ECQFD and LCA for enabling
sustainable product design has been attempted by few researchers.
In this context, this research project has been carried out.

0.285
0.333
0.000
0.000
0.000

cycle consist of introduction of environmental awareness to

customer requirements, assessment of environmental performance
as a design objective and evaluation of the potential of product for
re-use and recycling. In this research project, ECQFD and LCA has
been used for infusing the environmental features into product
development process.
5. Case study
5.1. About the case company
The case study has been carried out in an electronics switches
manufacturing organization located in Coimbatore, India (hereafter
referred to as ABC). They are the manufacturers of cam operated
rotary switches. The organization has implemented world class
strategies such as ISO 9001:2000 Quality Management System, 5S,
Kaizen, TQM etc. ABC aspires to enhance environmentally friendliness in their product design and development practices. ABC also
has implemented ISO 14001 Environmental Management System.
It has been realized that the integration of ECQFD and LCA would
enable sustainability improvement at ABC. In this context, this case
study has been motivated to be conducted at ABC.
5.2. Environmentally conscious quality function deployment
(ECQFD)

3. Methodology
The methodology followed during this project is shown in Fig. 1.
As shown in Fig. 1, the project starts with the review on ECQFD
and LCA. This is followed by the identication of tools/techniques
for sustainable product development. A suitable organization for
conducting case study has been identied. This is followed by the
application of tools/techniques for ensuring sustainable product
development. Then the practical inferences are derived.

This section describes the various aspects of ECQFD.

5.2.1. Identication of environmental VOC and environmental EM
This section describes the kind of requirements and attributes
considered from environmental perspective throughout the life
cycle of the product. Recyclers and Government are considered as
kind of customers. The voice of recyclers and government regulations are expressed by means of engineering terms.

4. Concept of sustainable product development cycle

5.2.2. Environmental voice of customer (VOC)
Environmental VOCs represent the quieter, safer operation of
switches: Comfort ability to hold switches easily; increased lifetime
of the switches; portability; Reduced material use; Easier to
transport; Reduced energy consumption; Increased durability; Easy
to re-use as a product; Easy to disassemble during the maintenance
stage; Easy to clean; Easy to sort the products; Harmless to the

Traditional product development cycle consists of gathering

customer requirements, identication of design objectives, design,
engineering analysis, manufacturing, usage and dispose. In the
sustainable product development cycle, environmental requirements need to be introduced into the development phases. The
various issues associated with sustainable product development

Table 5
ECQFD phase IV of rotary switches for option I.
Voice of customer

Customer Numbers of types Physical Rate of recycled Biodegradability Insulation Improvement

Improvement
weights
of materials
lifetime material
strength
rate of customer effect of customer
requirement
requirement

Less material usage

Easy to transport and retain
Less energy consumption
Easy to disassemble
Harmless to living environment
Improvement rate of engineering metrics
Amount

5
5
5
3
3

5
3

2
3
3

3
0.000

0.333

5
4
4
3
0.00

3
4
5
3
4
0.00

2
3
3

0.0196
0.0384
0.0332
0.0000
0.0000

0.098
0.192
0.166
0.000
0.000

0.0912

0.456

0.50

S. Vinodh, G. Rathod / Journal of Cleaner Production 18 (2010) 833842

837

Table 6
ECQFD phase IV of rotary switches for option II.
Voice of customer

Customer
weights

Numbers of types Physical

of materials
lifetime

Rate of recycled Biodegradability Insulation

material
strength

Improvement
Improvement
rate of customer effect of customer
requirement
requirement

Less material usage

Easy to transport and retain
Less Energy consumption
Easy to disassemble
Harmless to living environment
Improvement rate of engineering metrics
Amount

5
5
5
3
3

5
3

0.0246
0.0285
0.0133
0.0285
0.0000

0.123
0.142
0.066
0.085
0.000

0.0949

0.416

2
3
3

4
4
3
0.000

3
0.285

0.333

living environment of the users during manufacturing and use; and

Ease of disposability.
5.2.3. Environmental engineering metrics (EM)
Environmental EMs includes the technical/engineering characteristics of rotary switches. It also includes ease of application of
torque; reduced weight and volume; reduced number of parts;
reducing the material types; Increased hardness; Increased lifetime; Reduced amount of energy; Rate of materials being recycled;
Biodegradability and toxicity of materials; and Improved insulation
strength.
5.2.4. Identication of target for design improvement
5.2.4.1. ECQFD phase I. Phase I describes how ECQFD has been
applied to the design of rotary switches. Table 1 shows the
deployment of VOC to EM. VOC items in Table 1 include the environmental VOC such as easy to transport and retain as well as
traditional requirements such as harmless to living environment.
Generally VOC items are weighed based on market survey to reveal
the customer weights. Rating 5 indicates that it is very
important, 3 indicates it important and 1 indicates it is relatively important. The degree of importance of environmental VOC
is dependent on the concept of product life cycle. On the other
hand, EM items include new items such as insulation strength as
well as traditional items such as physical lifetime. The mapping

In-house
Production

Knob/Handle

Process

Knob shaft

Raw
material

Front assembly

Labor

Mounting plate

Factory
overhead

Contact stages

Purchasing
Supplier I
Supplier II
Supplier III

Clamping bolt

0.000

5.2.4.2. ECQFD phase II. Phase II is concerned with the deployment

of EM items to components of product. The relative importance for
each component of the product is obtained in the same manner as
phase I. As shown in Table 2, it is found that contact stages, knob
shaft and Knob/Handle are the important components. To
improve existing systems environmentally, the results obtained
here are concerned with the QFD results without the environmental VOC and environmental EM items.

Assembly
process
Total price of
parts
Labor
Overhead
Production
Cost of
ROTARY
SWITCH

Operational cost

Latching spring
Terminal screw

2
3
3

points between VOC items and EM items are indicated by means of

numbers indicating both factors called relational strength
determined by the designer. Similar to the weighing of VOC items
5 indicates the relation is strong, 3 indicates the relation is
medium and 1 indicates certain strength. Here, at the mapping
points between the environmental VOC items and environmental
EM items, the values of relational strength are provided for the
designer to enable decision-making process. The total of the sum
multiplied by customer weights and relational strength is the
raw score for each EM item. Relative weight for each item is
obtained by the raw score divided by the sum of the raw score. For
example, EM such as biodegradability, rate of recycled material
and number of types of materials with a raw score of 0.293,
0.239 and 0.177 respectively are relatively important to satisfy
customer requirements less energy consumption, less material
usage and Easy to transport and retain.

Cover plate

Contact spring

3
4
5
3
4
0.000

Admin. Cost
Mark & Dist
Cost

Nut
Fig. 2. Production ow line for a new component of rotary switches.

Profit

Market
Price of
ROTARY
SWITCH

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S. Vinodh, G. Rathod / Journal of Cleaner Production 18 (2010) 833842

In-house
procurement

In-house
Remanufacturing
Process

Assembly Process

Knob shaft
Disassembly
Cleaning

Product cost of
Remanufactured
Components

Front Assembly
Labor

Collection
Mounting Plate
Transportation
&

Testing &
Inspection

Overhead
Contact stages
Total Price of

Reprocessing

Cover Plate

Contact spring

Purchasing

Latching spring
Supplier I

Operational Cost
Admin. Cost

Terminal screw
Supplier II
Clamping bolt
Supplier III

Mark & Dist

Cost

Nut

Product Cost of
Remanufactured
ROTARY
SWITCH

Profit

Market Price of
Remanufactured
ROTARY
SWITCH
Fig. 3. Production ow line for re-manufacturing old component of rotary switches.

The results from phase II show that the important components

identied are Contact stage, Knob shaft and Knob/Handle.
5.2.5. Evaluation method of design improvement
ECQFD phases III and IV are concerned with the evaluation
method of design improvement.
5.2.5.1. ECQFD phase III. When design engineers improve their
product from the viewpoint of the environment, evaluating the
effects of candidates design changes on environmental aspects is an
effective process after identifying the important components. In
phase III, the effect of a set of design changes on EM items is estimated. In general, design engineers can make several alternative
plans. There are two options for design engineers to decide on what
they should rst focus. One method originates from target VOC. If
they have already had a target of less material usage, VOC, for
example, they should identify parts with less material usage. Other
one is examining the most important components identied in
phase II. Tables 3 and 4 shows the computations of phase III. Here,

priority has been assigned to the environmental aspects and the

design improvement plan has been set mainly from the viewpoint
of environment. The proposed two design options with consideration of the results of Phase I and phase II includes the following
Table 7
Components and the re-manufacturing processes.
Component

Materials

Market price
(INR)

Required re-manufacturing
processes

Knob/Handle
Knob shaft
Front assembly
Mounting plate
Contact stages
Cover plate
Contact spring
Latching spring
Terminal screw
Clamping bolt
Nut

ABS
Steel
ABS
Nylon-GF
Nylon-GF
Nylon-GF

10.00
5.00
18.00
8.00
6.00
5.00
0.45
0.45
0.25
0.40
0.25

Inj. moulding
Machining
Inj. moulding
Inj. moulding
Inj. moulding
Inj. moulding

S. Vinodh, G. Rathod / Journal of Cleaner Production 18 (2010) 833842

839

Table 8
Assessment model for individual component.
Description

Knob/Handle

Producing a new component

Product cost
Environmental cost
Product life cycle cost (PLCC)
Market price (MP)
Product effectiveness (PE) (1 for re-use
potential, 0 for not re-use potential)
PVL
PGNC PVL  PLCC
Re-manufacturing a old component
Procurement cost
Re-manufacturing cost
Environmental cost
Product life cycle cost (PLCC)
Market price (MP)
Product effectiveness (PE) (1 for re-use
potential, 0 for not re-use potential)
PVL
PGOC PVL  PLCC
DPG PGOC  PGNC

Knob
shaft

Front
assembly

Mounting
plate

Contact
stages

Cover
plate

Contact
spring

Latching
spring

Terminal
screw

Clamping
bolt

Nut

8
0.8
8.8
10
1

4
0.4
4.4
5
0

15
0.15
15.15
18
1

6
0.6
6.6
8
1

5
0.5
5.5
6
1

4
0.4
4.4
5
1

0.3
0.03
0.303
0.45
1

0.3
0.03
0.303
0.45
1

0.15
0.015
0.165
0.25
1

0.25
0.025
0.275
0.40
1

0.15
0.015
0.165
0.25
1

10
1.2

0
4.4

18
2.85

8
1.4

6
0.5

5
0.6

0.45
0.147

0.45
0.147

0.25
0.085

0.40
0.125

0.25
0.085

4.5
6.75
0.0675
11.317
18
1

1.8
2.7
0.027
4.527
8
1

1.5
2.25
0.0225
3.77
6
1

1.2
1.8
0.018
3.018
5
1

0.09
0.135
0.0013
0.2263
0.45
1

0.09
0.135
0.0013
0.2263
0.45
1

0.045
0.0675
0.0006
0.1131
0.25
1

0.075
0.1125
0.0011
0.1886
0.40
1

0.045
0.0675
0.0006
0.1131
0.25
1

18
6.683
3.833

8
3.473
2.073

6
2.23
1.73

5
1.982
1.382

0.45
0.2237
0.0767

0.45
0.2237
0.0767

0.25
0.1369
0.519

0.40
0.2114
0.0864

0.25
0.136
0.05

2.4
3.6
0.036
6.036
10
1

1.2
1.8
0.018
3.018
5
0

10
3.964
2.764

0
3.01
1.382

combinations of components and EMs. Options I and II are concerned with the design of a rotary switch taking environmental
aspects into account that is obtained from the phase II of ECQFD for
further improvement of design changes in an electronic rotary
switch.
Option I:
The materials used in the contact stages should have high
insulation strength and making knob shaft from material
with high friction co-efcient to increase the physical
lifetime.
Option II:
The material of the contact stages should have a longer
physical lifetime and the number of parts used in front
assembly should be minimum.
The numbers indicating the relational strength in phase II of
Table 2 at mapping points between the target EM and parts
remaining as shown in Tables 3 and 4. The improvement rate at each
EM item mrj is obtained from the equation Masui et al. (2003):

PK
mrj

bj;k cj;k
PK  
k1 bj;k
k1


j 1; 2; /; J

Where K is the index number of component, J is the index number of

EM, bj, k is the relational strength between EM item j to component k,

Fig. 4. Comparison of PG for old and new component.

cj, k is the improvement rate of EM item j to component k and

originally allowed to take the real number from 0.0 to 1.0.
5.2.5.2. ECQFD phase IV. The objective of phase IV is to translate the
effect of design changes on EM into environmental quality
requirements. Tables 5 and 6 shows an example of phase IV for
rotary switches. In this table, the number of customer weight and
relational strength between VOC items and EM items are the same
as shown in phase I (Table 1). The improvement rate for EM items
obtained in phase III are shown at the bottom of Tables 5 and 6. The
improvement rate for each environmental VOC vri is obtained
from the following equation Masui et al. (2003):

PJ

yri

mrj ai;j
j2
PJ  
a
j2 i;j


i 1; 2; .; I

Where J is the index number of EM item, I is the index number of

a VOC item, ai,j is the relational strength between Voc item I and EM
item j.
The improvement effect for the environmental VOC considering
customer weight is obtained by multiplying vri and customer
weight i.
5.2.6. Evaluation of design for environment options
The improvement effect for the VOCs with their weights was
calculated for each design from environment perspective through

Fig. 5. Comparison of PLCC for old and new component.

840

S. Vinodh, G. Rathod / Journal of Cleaner Production 18 (2010) 833842

1.

To what extent do you believe that the Environmental Conscious Quality Function Deployment (ECQFD) would enable the
attainment of sustainability in your organization?

Not all possible

2.

Partially Possible

10

Completely possible

To what extent do you believe that the simplified Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology is practically feasible and would
enable sustainability in your organization?

Not all possible

3.

Partially Possible

10

Completely possible

To what extent do you believe that the suggested product development cycle would enable sustainability in the process of designing
product process and services?

3
6
Figure
6. 4Format of 5questionnaire

Not all possible

Partially Possible

10

Completely possible

Fig. 6. The format of questionnaire.

phases III and IV. In this case study, the scores 0.456 and 0.416 are
obtained for options I and II, respectively and it has been concluded
that option I is found to be the best.
5.3. Life cycle assessment (LCA)
Life cycle assessment is used for assessing the environmental
impact of products and processes. Since the detailed assessment of
LCA is time consuming, simplied LCA methodology proposed by
Kaebernick et al. (2003) has been used in this project.
5.3.1. Production ow
To produce a new rotary switch, the organization manufactures
knob/handle, knob shaft, front assembly, mounting plate, contact
stages and front assembly in-house, while the other components
such as contact spring, latching spring, terminal screw, clamping
bolt and nut are purchased from suppliers. The parts are then
assembled to produce a switch as shown in Fig. 2. Producing a new

switch with some re-manufacturing components requires

a different production ow, which is shown in Fig. 3. It was
assumed that the potentially re-usable parts could be obtained in
the required high quality condition at the end of their rst life, so
that they could be used in the second lifetime.
5.3.2. Assessment model for individual parts
A cost model has been developed, integrating production and
environmental costs as well as the technical status of an old
product for re-use. The model calculates the product gain (PG) as
the difference between the product value (PVL) and the product life
cycle cost (PLCC), PLCC includes product costs and environmental
costs.

PG PVL  PLCC:
The technical status of a product is expressed by the term
known as product effectiveness (PE). This is set to 100% for a new
product and then decreased over time for a used part. The proposed

Table 9
Consolidated responses of the executives.
Serial
number

Question

To what extent do you believe that the

Environmental Conscious Quality
Function Deployment (ECQFD) would
enable the attainment of sustainability
in your organization?
To what extent do you believe that the
simplied Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)
methodology is practically feasible and
would enable sustainability in your
organization?
To what extent do you believe that the
suggested product development cycle
would enable sustainability in the process
of designing product process and services?

Average response of the executives in a Likerts scale of 110. (1 not all possible, 5 partially possible,
10 completely possible)
E1

E2

E3

E4

E5

Average response

Range

S. Vinodh, G. Rathod / Journal of Cleaner Production 18 (2010) 833842

Table 10
Overall opinion of the executives.

Table 11
Results of t-test.

Identity of the
executives

Response

E1

The methodology is useful for enabling

sustainability in our organization
ECQFD and LCA integration is practically
feasible in our organization
The tools/techniques enables sustainability
in the product design cycle
Suggested methodology indicates the feasibility
of transforming traditional product development
cycle into sustainable development cycle
The method is useful for our organization for
enabling sustainability

E2
E3
E4

E5

841

Variable N Mean Std. deviation SE mean 95% CI

model has been applied for assessing the re-usability of each part
and the switch as a whole. The calculations and the results for part
assessment are shown in Table 8. The following assumptions were
made for the calculations. Based on the sensitivity analysis, the
environmental cost is set as 10% of product cost and 1% of remanufacturing cost were found to be realistic. Therefore, these
gures are used to calculate the environmental cost for the new and
old product, respectively. PE indicates whether a part has re-use
potential or not. The rotary switch components and their EOL
options are listed in Table 7.
The comparison results for all parts of PG and PLCC are shown in
Figs. 4 and 5. Fig. 4 shows that all components have the positive
values of DPG, which means they are feasible for re-use. If any
components contain the negative DPG, which indicates those
components are not feasible for re-manufacturing.
6. Results and discussions
In order to explore the feasibility of deploying the process of
sustainable product development, a feedback session has been
conducted at ABC. Five executives participated in the feedback
session. The format of the questionnaire is shown in Fig. 6.
The consolidated responses of the executives are shown in
Table 9.
An interpretation on the responses of the executives indicated
that the feasibility of deploying integrated ECQFD and LCA for
enabling sustainable product development is to an extent of 80%.

E1
E2
E3
E4
E5

3
3
3
3
3

7.667
8.667
8.000
8.333
7.667

0.577
0.577
1.000
0.577
0.577

0.333
0.333
0.577
0.333
0.333

(6.232,
(7.232,
(5.516,
(6.899,
(6.232,

9.101)
10.101)
10.484)
9.768)
9.101)

4.00
1.00
1.73
2.00
4.00

0.057#
0.423#
0.225#
0.184#
0.057#

P values are greater than 0.05, which indicates the acceptance of null hypothesis.

The range pertaining to the responses does not exceed 2 which

indicated the uniformity in the executive responses.
Besides, overall opinions of the executives are presented in Table 10.
Based on the analysis of the responses of the executives, it has
been found that the suggested tools/techniques of product development would enable the attainment of sustainability at ABC.
6.1. Statistical validation
In order to further statistically analyse the feedback of the
competent personnel, one sample t test has been conducted to
examine the acceptance of Integration of ECQFD and LCA for
ensuring sustainable product design. In the rst case, the test
value was given as 9 which mean that 90% of the opinions are in
favour of successful integration of ECQFD and LCA for ensuring
sustainable product design in practice at 95% condence interval.
The null hypothesis has not been satised in this case.
In the second case, the null hypothesis was set as 80% of the
opinions are in favour of successful integration of ECQFD and LCA
for ensuring sustainable product design in practice at 95% condence interval. The results are shown in Table 11. As observed, P
values are greater than 0.05, which indicates the acceptance of null
hypothesis.
On the whole, this validation study indicated the feasibility of
successful integration of ECQFD and LCA for ensuring sustainable
product design in practice with the success rate of 80 percent.
6.2. Managerial implications
The managerial implications have been shown in Fig. 7.
First, exposure programme has to be conducted to the top
management about ECQFD and LCA integration. Then the

Conduct exposure programme to the top management

about ECQFD and LCA integration

Obtain managements approval for to apply ECQFD and

LCA integration in the organization

Managements approval is obtained to apply ECQFD and

LCA integration in the organization
Conduct exposure programme on ECQFD and LCA integration
in the organization to the team members

Managements approval is
not obtained to apply
ECQFD and LCA
integration in the
organization

Stop proceeding further

Supply the data sheet to collect relevant data for ECQFD and LCA

Improvement in Sustainability of product design

Fig. 7. Managerial implications.

842

S. Vinodh, G. Rathod / Journal of Cleaner Production 18 (2010) 833842

managements approval has to be obtained to apply ECQFD and LCA

integration in the organization. If the managements approval is not
obtained, the procedure has to be stopped. Then the exposure
programme needs to be conducted to the team members. The data
sheet has to be supplied to the team members for collecting relevant data. Then the improvement in sustainability of product
design has been checked.
6.3. Industrial impact
The conduct of the case study enables the introduction of environmental awareness to customer requirements, assessment of
environmental performance as a design objective and evaluation of
the potential of product for re-use and recycling. The executives of
ABC felt that the integration of ECQFD and LCA has very much
enabled the improvement of sustainability of their organization.
7. Conclusion
The reduction of production cost and prevention of environmental problems for ensuring clean and green atmosphere is the
focus of contemporary manufacturing organizations (Kaebernick
et al., 2002). Sustainable system tries to maximize resources efciency for the production of sustained components (Benedetto and
Klemes, 2009). In the contemporary manufacturing scenario, the
environmental requirements must be treated with equal importance to traditional product requirements (Griese, 2005). In this
context, this project reports a case study in which ECQFD and LCA
has been integrated for enabling sustainable product development.
The analysis of the response of executives indicates that the suggested tools/techniques of sustainable product development would
enable sustainability in manufacturing organizations. The implementation study also revealed that new market opportunities could
be identied for the organization.
7.1. Scope for future research
The sustainable product design model integrated with ECQFD
and LCA has been test implemented in a single manufacturing
organization. But the inferences derived from the conduct of the
study are applicable to similar manufacturing organizations. In
future more tools/techniques could be developed for enabling
sustainable product development. The case study could be carried
out using several tools/techniques of sustainable engineering for
different manufacturing organizations across varied sectors in
different countries.
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