An evidential reasoning-based AHP approach for the selection of environmentally-friendly designs

Due to the stringent environmental regulatory requirements being imposed by cross-national bodies in recent years, manufacturers have to minimize the environmental impact of their products. Among those environmental impact evaluation tools available, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is often employed to quantify the product's environmental impact throughout its entire life cycle. However, owing to the requirements of expert knowledge in environmental science and vast effort for data collection in carrying out LCA, as well as the common absence of complete product information during product development processes, there is a need to develop a more suitable tool for product designers. An evidential reasoning-based approach, which aims at providing a fast-track method to perform design alternative evaluations for non-LCA experts, is therefore introduced as a new initiative to deal with the incomplete or uncertain information. The proposed approach also enables decision makers to quantitatively assess the life cycle phases and design alternatives by comparing their potential environmental impacts, thus effectively and efficiently facilitates the identification of greener designs. A case application is carried out to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed approach.