Integrated energy efficiency and regulatory conformity assessment for the evaluation of improved mass-product options

In Industrial Engineering, an effective way to develop energy-efficient products that meet regulations is to evaluate the energy-related performance of product options as early as possible. In this context, an 'Energy Efficiency Assessment' serves to assess future energy-related impacts of product options. Approaches and methods for 'Regulatory Conformity Assurance' can be applied, in turn, to perform 'Regulatory Conformity Assessments', which means assessing conformity of product options to energy-related regulations such as laws, labels, etc. Regrettably, today both Energy Efficiency Assessment and Regulatory Conformity Assessment are mostly performed in advanced Product Development stages and/or in an unintegrated manner. As a solution to this problem, the method called 'eco-check' and method-specific IT support prototypes have been developed. These solutions are introduced in this publication and integrate Energy Efficiency and Regulatory Conformity Assessments to evaluate product options according to the needs of early Product Development. Thanks to an integration of method-specific indicators and standardized Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) indicators, the eco-check solutions enable designers (product developers) to consider not only a product lifecycle perspective, but also the perspectives of companies and product end-users, which are usually focused on the production and the use product lifecycle phases respectively. Moreover, the eco-check solutions focus on the energy demand, energy-related greenhouse gas emissions, and energy-related costs of improved (mature) and mass-produced Energy-using Products (EuPs). Finally, the eco-check method and IT support prototypes have been validated by a case study of water kettle improvement.