An Environmental and Operational Analysis of Quality Function Deployment-Based Methods

Ecodesign consists of integrating environmental considerations into the product development process by means of practices that involve the use of methods, techniques, tools, and guidelines. However, many published practices do not incorporate important environmental issues, often resulting in a product development process that is ineffective from an ecodesign standpoint. This paper’s aim is threefold: (i) Identifying environmental and operational criteria and determining weights to these criteria; (ii) assessing and selecting quality function deployment (QFD)-based ecodesign methods using environmental and operational criteria, and (iii) analyzing the practitioners’ perception of the most suitable QFD-based method identified by the second aim. To that end, a comprehensive literature review of ecodesign practices based on QFD and its requirements was carried out, and a survey was conducted with environmental science and product development experts, whose answers enabled the prioritization of the characteristics those practices must meet from environmental and operational standpoints. Thereafter, a workshop was carried out with design engineers from an automotive company in Brazil. This study’s findings indicate that many QFD-based ecodesign methods fail to consider the life cycle perspective, do not assess environmental impacts, and have not been tested before being published. Another finding from industry designers suggests that ecodesign methods should be easy to use and not time-consuming.