Evaluation of Eco Design Alternatives using Fuzzy AHP Methodology

Design for environment is becoming an important design consideration in new product development. It is due to the increasing public awareness of the need for environmental protection and pressures of regulatory requirements (Maxwell and Van der Vorst, 2003). To assess the environmental impact of a product, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is often used. However, an LCA study is not easy to conduct because many environmental data are not available. Also, LCA is a time-consuming study that may not be feasible for product designers as they have to deal with tight product development schedule. To assist product designers' assessment of a product's environmental performance against different design alternatives, this paper suggests incorporating fuzzy based Analytic Hierarchy Process (fuzzy-AHP) with streamlined LCA to evaluate design alternatives during new product development.