Eco-design represents a natural process for industries wishing to fulfil their role in safeguarding environment and resources. The constraint linked to impacts becomes a decisive factor which can be systematically integrated in the early stages of products development. Because of chips specificities, both in structure and complexity of design process, microelectronic industry has been up to now out of advanced considerations related to chips environnemental performances. Our target was to define an eco-design methodology dedicated to microelectronic sector including the identification of methods, tools and indicators which have the highest chance to be deployed in R&D departments. The strategy aims to increase designers' environmental consciousness and drive them to explore innovative opportunities that can positively impact the environment during design phase. Our methodology relies on a platform integrating three tools, each one of them dedicated to a part of chip design. Environmental analysis is based on Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). In the preliminary stages of design, knowledge on product (structure, properties and performances) is limited so the evaluation is assessed using “Quick LCA”: it consists in predicting the environmental footprint of an under-development product thanks to adaptive mechanism based on the evaluation of previous generations. In addition to technical solutions, an optimized integration of an innovative process such as eco-design requires organizational changes into the company: a proposal for internal design process modification was done including recommendations for integration of a product-oriented management system.
Eco-design methodology for microelectronic products