Whitepapers

6 Five Steps to Eco Design // STEP 5: ESTABLISH TARGETS AND THE INFORMATION SYSTEMS TO SUPPORT THEM Companies that have successfully implemented eco design often have long-term, corporate-level targets for improving environmental performance. For instance, engine manufacturer Cummins unveiled a new environmental strategy timed to be implemented by 2030, which included: • Reducing absolute lifetime greenhouse gas emissions f rom newly sold products by 25% • Reusing or responsibly recycling 100% of packaging plastics Setting this type of target has two effects. First, it demonstrates the company's long-term commitment to environmental performance, and second, it establishes a f ramework in which targets can be set at the project level. Some companies have found it effective to "cascade" these targets to the project level by including environmental impact reduction targets within product requirements specifications. This is because designers use product requirements to focus their design effort and assign design time. Defining targets helps to develop the right behavior in an organization. However delivering on those targets requires the right information. Consider the challenges of legislation raised in section 2. Meeting these requires an organization to track the effect of regulations, laws, and standards on its products. In regards to tip four, this often means ensuring access to up-to-date information on the restricted substance or other environmental impacts of specific materials and process choices. Executives should not only set targets, but ask, "What systems do we have in place to enable informed materials and process decisions?" / 4. How Ansys Granta Technology Can Support Your Eco Design Activities Ansys Granta's core expertise in materials and process selection and materials information management, together with our understanding of the challenges of eco design, has allowed us to develop a range of practical software tools. Granta includes supporting materials and environmental data, which enables access to a full range of material attributes. They are designed to be used during the early stages of design and simulation, where changing the material and process choices costs least but matters most (Figure 5). Table 3: How Ansys Granta's software can support your eco design. Figure 5: Ansys Granta's eco design tools meet the need for assessing environmental impact during design. Streamlined LCA Material Selection & Substitution Assess Product Risk Materials and Environmental Data Open Ecosystem Material Intelligence A B C D E Design Brief Increasing Cost Eco Design Tools Embodiment Design Manufacture Conceptual Design Detailed Design Use A. Streamlined LCA Designed to complement a traditional LCA, the Eco Audit functionality within Ansys Granta Selector can be used to perform a streamlined LCA. Users can input a simple bill of materials (BoM) for a product and add information on its manufacture, transport and use. It will then predict the environmental impact for each phase of the product's life cycle (see Figure 6). By providing a quantitative estimate of these potential environmental risks, a streamlined LCA using Eco Audit will allow development teams to rapidly iterate different designs to look at the environmental effects of changing materials, manufacturing processes, transportation types, usage, and other factors. Figure 6: An example Eco Audit from Granta Selector.

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