Utveckling och tillämpning av miljödokumentation som verktyg för produktutveckling : En fallstudie på förvaringsserien Space från Thule Möbler AB

Sammanfattning: Thule Möbler AB in Kungsör, Sweden, is a retailer and manufacturer of furniture and fixtures for offices. They have previously worked with a general environmental declaration which describes the company’s overall environmental work, but they see a need for declaring the environmental performance of specific products. It is seen as an advantage if the environmental declaration can be used in product development to integrate consideration for environmental issues in the development process as well. The company also wish to develop and improve an existing series for office-storage, called Space. The work conducted in this paper is based on a product development process combined with a general research process which consists of a pre-study that describes the work of developing an environmental declaration and a case-study that includes the testing of the environmental declaration in the development of the office-storage Space. The methods used for developing the environmental declaration are literature reviews on standards for environmental declaration, scientific papers on the subject, environmental declarations from other companies and literature concerning productdevelopment tools and their structure. The use of the environmental declaration as product-information is tested and evaluated by trials on the intended user while the use of the environmental declaration as a product development tool is tested through the case-study. The case-study is based on a product development process that includes different product development tools, user-studies and analysis of the market. The user-studies and market-analysis are conducted as observation, questionnaires,interviews and a small literature review. The result is described both for the pre-study with the design of the environmental declaration and the case-study with the outcome of the product development. The environmental declaration consists of three documents, one template to be filled, one instruction for filling out the template, one spreadsheet containing the data to fill in and one example of a filled in declaration. The product consists of modules in the size 800x400x400mm that are connected by connection-brackets. The modules can be fitted with doors and handles, shelves and partitions, base and attachments for small-storage. The modules can be placed in six different ways in relation to each other and can be rearranged when needed. They can also be places free-standing or against a wall. The result of the case-study shows that the environmental declaration can be used as a tool for product development concerning evaluation and selection. The try-outs that are conducted indicates that the environmental declaration also is suitable for use as product-information. It is however important that the environmental declaration is continuously updated to ensure the data is correct, it should also be expanded to include other products. The developed product should be tested for strength and stability in accordance with Swedish standards.