Knowledge-based approximate life cycle assessment system in the collaborative design environment

In a competitive and globalized business environment, the need for green products becomes stronger. To meet these trends, environmental assessment besides delivery, cost and quality of products should be considered as an important factor in the new product development phase. In this paper, a knowledge-based approximate life cycle assessment system (KALCAS) for the collaborative design environment is developed to assess environmental impacts in the context of product concept development. It aims at improving the environmental efficiency of the product using artificial neural networks consisting of high-level product attributes and LCA results. The overall framework of the collaborative environment including KALCAS is proposed. The architecture for the collaborative design environment is used in the CO/spl trade/ environment to allow users on a wide variety of platforms to access the product data and other related information. It enables us to tradeoff the evaluation results between the objectives of design alternatives including environmental impacts in the collaborative design environment.