Perspectives on greener product development and manufacturing from Sustainable Minds, our partners, customers and contributors.

Manufacturing

Bresslergroup builds a better mousetrap and sustainability wins

By Guest contributors on December 17, 2010

Guest contributor Mathieu Turpault is Director of Design and Managing Partner of Bresslergroup. Based in Philadelphia, Bresslergroup offers innovative product solutions via integrated user research, industrial design and production engineering. The consultancy serves consumer, medical and industrial manufacturers. Founded in 1970, Bresslergroup has won more than 80 major design awards and has authored more than 125 patents. Bresslergroup was an early adopter of the Designers Accord and has hosted two Designers Accord sessions in Philadelphia. 

In redesigning existing products, we have found that incremental change when multiplied by hundreds of thousands of units can have a resoundingly positive environmental impact. Furthermore, when retailers and manufacturers work together to drive sustainability improvements, it creates a role for product design firms to put their create design and engineering talents to work. Sustainable Minds is a powerful tool we use to test hypothesis, evaluate and prove how a redesigned product can be more environmentally responsible.

Autodesk's Sustainability Workshop for engineering faculty and students

By Guest contributors on December 3, 2010

Guest contributor Jeremy Faludi (LEED AP) is a sustainable design strategist and researcher. He teaches green design at Stanford University, where he created the graduate/undergraduate class ME221: Green Design Tools and Metrics, and at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design.

I recently had the pleasure of helping Autodesk develop some sustainable design tutorials. It's called the Autodesk Sustainability Workshop, and is aimed at college engineering students and teachers. Along with Autodesk's fantastic Sustainability Initiative team members Dawn Danby and Adam Menter, and the video production wizards at Free Range Studios, we launched a set of five short videos on sustainable design theory that introduce essential concepts of sustainable design, such as whole systems thinking, life-cycle thinking, and lightweighting. The Autodesk folks also put together twenty tutorial videos on how to implement the concepts in Autodesk software, along with datasheets and other resources. More great content is in the works, on other topics.

Webcast #3: The Truth About Environmental Performance Software (Replay)

By Sustainable Minds on November 24, 2010

Originally recorded on November 18, 2010, this webcast features Nancy Johnson, editor-in-chief, Cadalyst magazine as moderator, with key representatives from the LCA and PLM worlds discussing the issues honestly and openly:

  • Terry Swack, CEO & Founder, Sustainable Minds
  • Jørgen Vos, Product Management Director, Life Cycle Analytics, PTC InSight Product Analytics
  • Lise Laurin, founder, EarthShift
  • Amy A. Rowell, founder and principal analyst, Four Winds Research

In the effort to create greener products, environmental performance software is but one piece of the puzzle. Sustainable product development requires new knowledge, skills, and processes - supported by technology and applied across the product lifecycle.

Webcast #2: Why Hasn't PLM Taken Over the World? (Replay)

By Sustainable Minds on November 16, 2010

This discussion, originally recorded on November 4, 2010 is everything we hoped to create in this new podcast series: intelligent, challenging, fun…and utterly devoid of marketing hype. Listen in as Nancy Johnson of Cadalyst moderates a panel including Ben Eadie, Chad Jackson, Oleg Shilovitsky and Chris Williams discuss PLM as you have never heard it discussed before.
We hope you enjoy the replay >

Autodesk Webcast Replay: Lifecycle Assessment and BIM for Sustainability

By Sustainable Minds on October 20, 2010

Download the webcast >

Robert E. Middlebrooks AIA, Industry Strategy and Relations Manager from Autodesk's AEC Solutions, gave a compelling talk on BIM & LCA. More than 1200 people attended! He demonstrates a great project he built in Sustainable Minds showing how he evaluated the impacts from a flooring system.

AEC professionals are well aware that designing sustainably is key to achieving environmental goals. Architects, engineers, construction professionals and building owners must focus on the best decisions during conception, design, construction and operations in order to support sustainability objectives. Since new buildings and renovation projects will serve their occupants for decades, the overall cost in resources and the environmental impact of operations and maintenance must outweigh the initial costs of construction.

On the Edge with Cadalyst - Webcast #1: Overcoming Environmental Performance Anxiety (Replay)

By Sustainable Minds on October 15, 2010

The first episode, featuring a distinguished panel of experts, focused on "Overcoming Environmental Performance Anxiety," a discussion that embodies the webcast series' ambitions of bringing a new point-of-view to the important issues facing the CAD and PLM worlds.

Panelists:

  • John Davies, Vice President, GreenBiz Intelligence, Greener World Media
  • Stephen B. Leonard, Design & Innovation Practice Leader, Alcoa Technical Center
  • Sridhar Condoor, Ph.D. Professor, Aerospace & Mechanical Engineering, KEEN Fellow, Saint Louis University
  • Manish Mehta, Ph.D., Executive Director of Industry Forums and Sustainability, National Center for Manufacturing Sciences

We hope you enjoy the replay >

Please join us for the series - noon ET, 9am PT
November 4 | Webcast #2: Why PLM Hasn't Taken Over the World. Register at http://www.cadalystedge.com/podcast.

Webcast: Overcoming ‘Environmental Performance’ Anxiety

By Sustainable Minds on October 9, 2010

Sustainable Minds’ Affiliate, Cadalyst, is launching a new webcast series with an edge, called “On the Edge with Cadalyst.” The premiere presentation, Overcoming Environmental Performance Anxiety, will discuss how going green can fuel product innovation and increase revenue. It airs live on October 14 at 12pm ET, 9am PT.
Register Now >

Typical webcasts today might include a PowerPoint presentation or software demonstration and often conclude with a sales pitch. A new webcast series from Cadalyst, called On the Edge, will be nothing like that.

On the Edge with Cadalyst will bring together designers, engineers, managers, executives, industry analysts, and hardware and software developers alike to exchange information, ask tough questions, and tackle issues that stand in the way of progress in the fields of manufacturing, AEC, and civil engineering. They’ll always come back to technology because that’s what Cadalyst is all about. But above and beyond that, this series will aim to be an innovative, open forum where people can gather to ask questions, answer questions, and even debate as they work toward the mutual goals of improving design and growing business.

SM's CEO on environmental sustainability as a product innovation driver

By Sustainable Minds on September 27, 2010

Watch Sustainable Minds CEO, Terry Swack give a short presentation at the recent 'AlwaysOn & STVP Summit at Stanford 2010, Meet the New Captains of Innovation'. Terry presents to an audience of Silicon Valley investors, journalists and technologists about why Sustainable Minds is the clear winner in bringing environmental sustainability to mainstream product development. Watch the video >

Farm designs greener medical devices

By Guest contributors on August 30, 2010

This post was submitted by guest contributor, Jim Rudolph, Industrial Designer at Farm in Hollis, New Hampshire. Farm recently announced their sustainable product development services.

Sustainability is part of good design. It is a natural extension of the traditional product development goals of efficiency and quality. Sustainable design strategies that lead to streamlined production, optimized materials usage, minimized weight, and reduced waste are all real opportunities for competitive and economic advantage for our clients.

Throughout Farm’s product development process, concepts are evaluated for attributes including usability, aesthetics, cost and manufacturability. Sustainable Minds LCA enables us to easily ‘prototype’ a concept’s life cycle impact and integrate environmental performance into our evaluation criteria as well. The software’s flexibility enables our project teams to make informed estimates about environmental impact very early in the development process while concepts are still evolving.

Greener Decisions

By Sustainable Minds on August 23, 2010

Originally posted on Modern Edge.

Environmentally sustainable design is at a crossroads. The insight and emotion that drove the passionate early adopters is giving way to data-driven decision making. New software tools and design methodologies are gaining traction and the result is a new level of innovation. But there’s still work to do for greener design methodologies to go mainstream. This is the take away from the dialogue on Thursday August 5th, at the Sustainable Minds and Modern Edge design reception at the Modern Edge Studio in PDX. Three main areas of discussion arose:

Credible Greener Decisions:
The question has changed from “How will we save the world?” to “How can we make credible decisions and substantiate progress?” It’s about putting credibility into the process of creating greener design. “Data is the common language; with good data multi-disciplinary teams can quickly come to consensus on the right steps to greener design.” It’s about changing emotion into rational action.