1) Studies to include environmental aspects into products design and manufacturing

a) Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)
LCA is a method to evaluate the environmental impacts of a product considering the life cycle. We are conducting the case studies to evaluate environmental impacts of the society using ICT technologies. In addition to this, we are studying the weighting methods of the environmental impacts categories such as global warming and hazards of using chemical substances on LCA.
b) Development of QFDE
We are developing a conceptual design method of a product including their environmental aspects, which is based on QFD and add the environmental issues of a product as "voice of costumer" (QFDE: Quality Function Deployment for Environment).

2) Studies to include social aspects into products design and manufacturing

a) Sustainable Consumption and Production (SPC)
Life style or consumption patterns of consumers should be changed to realize the global sustainability in the future. We analyze the consumers' behavior, e.g. preference and choice of products/social-systems/infrastructures, and develop a methodology to design and manufacture products having high social acceptability. Diagnostic methods of artifacts are studied in conjunction with on-line health-monitoring of various information about plants and large-scale artifacts. In these methods, the lifetime of each component can be monitored independently. Emphasis is on the safe operation of a nuclear power plant.

(Last updated on 18-March-2010)