Assessment of Sustainable Practices in New Product Design

Product development is one of the most critical aspects for companies in reaching their sustainability objectives. Decisions during NPD process have impact on 80-90% of a product‟s life cycle sustainability performance. Hence, to understand how and what companies are doing currently to integrate sustainability into their products and product design processes with a specific focus on environmental aspects is the main objective of this paper. The investigation has been conducted by means of a questionnaire developed based on a framework in order to assess manufacturing companies operating in Italy in mechanical, electrical and automotive sectors. The analysis was carried out on 10 companies with high innovation cycles, which are subject to many product based EU legislations. The results revealed that sustainability is not well integrated into product design yet as companies just try to tackle legislations still considering sustainability as a constraint rather than exploiting the opportunities for eco-innovation. Thus, eco-design improvement options only stand a chance, if they are supported by some stimuli related to economical aspects apart from just environmental benefits. Keywords: Sustainability, Eco-design, New Product Development (NPD), Eco-design tools