Environmentally conscious design by using fuzzy multi-attribute decision-making

Products affect the environment at many points in their life cycles. Once a product moves from the drawing board into the production line, its environmental attributes are largely fixed. Many researchers have focused on developing intelligent systems to provide a variety of design and manufacturing information to help designers make environmentally conscious decisions. However, in the early design stage, not all the information available is precise. A large amount of information, especially those that are based on designer experience, is fuzzy in nature. This paper presents an innovative method, namely green fuzzy design analysis (GFDA), which involves simple and efficient procedures to evaluate product design alternatives based on environmental consideration using fuzzy logic. The hierarchical structure of environmentally conscious design indices was constructed using the analytical hierarchy process (AHP), which include five aspects: (1) energy, (2) recycling, (3) toxicity, (4) cost, and (5) material. After weighting factors for the environmental attributes are determined, the most desirable design alternative can be selected based on the fuzzy multi-attribute decision-making (FMADM) technique. The benefit of using such a technique is to effectively solve the design problem by capturing human expertise. © 2006 Springer-Verlag London Limited.