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D. Gerhard, T. Rahmani:
"PDM based Lifecycle Analysis - A Case Study";
Talk: Entwerfen - Entwickeln - Erleben EEE2012, Dresden; 2012-06-14; in: "Entwerfen Entwickeln Erleben: Methoden und Werkzeuge in der Produktentwicklung", TUDpress, (2012), ISBN: 978-3-942710-80-0; Paper ID 205, 7 pages.

To facilitate collaborative design in vocational education institutions, we have conducted a project to establish a nationwide PDM platform for four different schools spread all over the country. The particular aim of a follow up project introduced in this paper is to sensitize the participating students to sustainable design and lifecycle assessment (LCA) and provide them with hands-on tools through the PDM platform to accomplish these tasks. As a collaborative case study project, a cordless drill driver was chosen to be re-designed with respect to Ecodesign aspects. Since LCA is truly a holistic task, we focused on the ecological aspects of material and production stage. Distribution, usage and end-of-life stages were left out as well as economic and social aspects. The drill driver was divided into housing, drill chuck, gear and power unit. Each component was assigned to one of the schools and had to be designed with respect to reduced environmental impacts. Since different CAD systems are used the decision to provide the needed tools and environmental information within the PDM platform rather than CAD environment was easy. Some of the PDM systems on the market do also provide lifecycle analysis modules but it is rather a black box approach than a transparent data and reporting source. Because LCA heavily relies on the method itself and the way analysis is conducted we decided to develop our own tools. Therefore, a new, adapted interface was developed using open source business intelligence software called Pentaho to facilitate on the fly reporting and analytics of the work in progress by the users. Furthermore, the Ecoinvent database was connected to the PDM system to provide required information on carbon footprint and cumulated energy demand. The paper discusses strength and weaknesses of tools and methods with respect to the introduced case study and gives an outlook on ontology representation for the data model for better analysis capabilities.

To facilitate collaborative design in vocational education institutions, we have conducted a project to establish a nationwide PDM platform for four different schools spread all over the country. The particular aim of a follow up project introduced in this paper is to sensitize the participating students to sustainable design and lifecycle assessment (LCA) and provide them with hands-on tools through the PDM platform to accomplish these tasks. As a collaborative case study project, a cordless drill driver was chosen to be re-designed with respect to Ecodesign aspects. Since LCA is truly a holistic task, we focused on the ecological aspects of material and production stage. Distribution, usage and end-of-life stages were left out as well as economic and social aspects. The drill driver was divided into housing, drill chuck, gear and power unit. Each component was assigned to one of the schools and had to be designed with respect to reduced environmental impacts. Since different CAD systems are used the decision to provide the needed tools and environmental information within the PDM platform rather than CAD environment was easy. Some of the PDM systems on the market do also provide lifecycle analysis modules but it is rather a black box approach than a transparent data and reporting source. Because LCA heavily relies on the method itself and the way analysis is conducted we decided to develop our own tools. Therefore, a new, adapted interface was developed using open source business intelligence software called Pentaho to facilitate on the fly reporting and analytics of the work in progress by the users. Furthermore, the Ecoinvent database was connected to the PDM system to provide required information on carbon footprint and cumulated energy demand. The paper discusses strength and weaknesses of tools and methods with respect to the introduced case study and gives an outlook on ontology representation for the data model for better analysis capabilities.

CAD, ecodesign, PDM, product development