The Role of the Eco-Requirements in the Sustainable Product Development Based on the Axiomatic Design Principles

One of the current trends of competitive companies is moving to eco-innovation. This pathway involves a multidisciplinary approach and a systemic attitude concerning to eco-design. The focus must be to analyse the customer requests from a sustainable viewpoint, understanding their real needs and finding solutions structurally sustainable from the early steps of the product development. The objective of this paper is to consider the perspective of the eco-design not as control issue, but something that should be used from the outset of the design process and be considered in the different domains of the design at all its levels of detail, in parallel with the ÒusualÓ functionality. The herein described consists in introducing the eco-requirements by structuring the eco-issues in the design product structure based on the Axiomatic Design theory. The result of this research is a proposal for a guideline for the structuring of the sustainable product development using a surfboard as an example.