Sustainability Function Deployment: A system-level design-for-sustainability

Incorporating sustainability into the design-for-quality is typically aimed at achieving long-term quality performance (durability and resilience) without depleting scarce resources an generating tremendous waste. At system level, sustainability can be attained in terms of three aspects; economic, environmental, and social. Social aspects are typically focused on human and community health, safety, employment, and life-style. Environmental factors will assure less direct or indirect negative impact to the overall context of the environment including natural resources and built environment and encourage practices that protect the environment. Economic factors present the challenge to optimize and manage the cost of sustainability (the continuity of revenue stream while addressing social and environmental concerns). Meeting the multiple requirements of stakeholder regarding the three aspects of sustainability is a typical challenge to architectural and system designers. In this paper, the well-known quality tool, Quality Function Deployment (QFD), is utilized as a methodology for Sustainability Function Deployment (SFD) that is applicable to system-level design-for-sustainability. To this end, various enhancements are made to the conventional QFD model to accommodate the three aspects of system-level sustainability. The approach is further illustrated through SFD application to design a sustainable building and to revitalize an inner-city block.