Establishment of product assessment in the small and medium enterprise manufacturing industry

In order to reduce the environmental load of products and services, it is necessary to perform prior environmental evaluation during the products and services design phase. The result of the prior evaluation should be used to increase the reusability, promote recycling, reduce the material usage, and reduce hazardous material usage. Since 1991, in an effort to promote the use of product assessment, the Clean Japan Center has done research on product assessment and, in addition, created and distributed general manuals. In Japanese large enterprises, the use of product assessment is being established; however, in the small and medium enterprise manufacturing industry, product assessment is still rarely used. In order to establish the use of product assessment in the small and medium enterprise manufacturing industry, a basic product assessment worksheet was developed. Using the basic worksheet, it is possible to quantitatively evaluate important factors for Environment Conscious Design such as: ease of disassembly, component sharing, reduce, reuse, recycle, and environmental information communication. By establishing the use of this basic worksheet, establishment of product assessment in the small and medium enterprise manufacturing industry is anticipated.