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Systems thinking towards holistic, sustainability-oriented assessment and decision-making for lightweighting

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 May 2024

Katharina Johnston-Lynch ,
Robert Ian Whitfield  and
Dorothy Evans
Katharina Johnston-Lynch*
Affiliation:
University of Strathclyde, United Kingdom
Robert Ian Whitfield
Affiliation:
University of Strathclyde, United Kingdom
Dorothy Evans
Affiliation:
National Manufacturing Institute Scotland, United Kingdom
*
[email protected]

Abstract

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Multiple industries have hailed lightweighting promise to reduce the mass of their product at equivalent or improved performance. Lightweighting as a strategy encompasses lightweight end-product desired attributes and through-life processing decisions. Assessment of lightweighting gathers information for decision-making towards the optimization of these strategies. An exploratory study, using systems thinking is conducted, to identify requirements of lightweighting and its assessment in terms of holistically defining its impact on the sustainability of its background system, the Earth.

Keywords

lightweightinglife cycle assessment (LCA)sustainabilitydecision makingsystems thinking
Type
Design for Sustainability
Information
Proceedings of the Design Society , Volume 4: DESIGN 2024 , May 2024 , pp. 1319 - 1328
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
The Author(s), 2024.

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