The Role of CAD and PLM in Ecodesign: A Short Review

The international community has been aware of the climate emergency it is facing since the early 1990s, and a sustainable approach to development, including product development, clearly needs to be adopted. Tools such as the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals enable various players—including engineering organizations developing products—to adopt a sustainable approach to development, encourage rational resource management while minimizing adverse effects on the environment, and promote various end-of-life strategies for products. The concept of ecodesign is defined as the integration of environmental aspects into product design with the aim of reducing products’ adverse environmental impacts throughout their life cycle. Different types of ecodesign tools exist, some qualitative in nature, and others, quantitative. Some are assessment tools that focus on a single environmental impact indicator, while others look at several impact indicators over the entire product life cycle. Life cycle assessment (LCA) falls into the latter category. It is used to assess all the environmental impacts of a product or service, from raw material extraction through to ultimate product disposal. LCA makes it possible to identify the most environmentally critical aspects of a product’s life cycle so that improvements can be targeted. Therefore, ecodesign and life cycle assessment tools should help product designers make the most sustainable decisions taking LCA results into account. Since designers typically use CAD tools and PLM platforms, this chapter offers a short review of how CAD and PLM can contribute to ecodesign and LCA tool use. The review reveals that the coupling of CAD tools and LCA functionalities is promising. However, the LCA results produced are often simplified, and there are inherent problems associated with CAD and LCA data interoperability. As for PLM platforms, combining PLM and LCA also seems relevant since most of the data required to perform LCA are available from the PLM system. However, coupling LCA functionalities with a PLM solution is complex and challenging. Moreover, while ecodesign takes into account the environmental dimension of sustainable development, the social and economic dimensions are also very important, and ecodesign is far from sufficient to achieve product development that truly respects the planet’s limits.