The Reduction of Environmental Impact by Re-design throughout the Lifecycle of a JCB Seat

Start - Finish:

June 2008

Project Members

Sam Inshaw, Ben Glazebrook, Mike Dickson and Laurence Booth

Keywords:

LCA, seat, JCB

Useful Websites:

JCB main site

Aims & Objectives:

The purpose of this report is to demonstrate how sustainable product design and design for environment principles can be applied to the design of a JCB Teletruk driver seat. Several re-designs have been proposed for the seats features, sub-assemblies and components which look to reduce the environmental impact of the seat throughout its entire lifecycle. Economic, social and ethical issues are considered during the formation of each proposal.

- To propose a re-design of the JCB driver seat using sustainable product and design for environmental practices so that the environmental, social and ethical impacts throughout the products lifecycle are reduced.

In order to achieve this project aim the following objectives need to be achieved:

- Complete a Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) for the seat
- Define the project goal and scope
- Analyse the product throughout its entire lifecycle
- Assess the products environmental impact using appropriate tools
- Interpret the results and suggest potential design changes to reduce environmental impacts
- Generate a number of design ideas with improved sustainability
- Evaluate the feasibility and economic viability of each idea and identify the most suitable for further development
- Produce a proposed re-design
- Analyse the re-design and justify that it demonstrates reduces environmental impact and considers social and ethical issues

JCB is one of the world’s third largest manufacturers of heavy equipment, predominantly within construction and agriculture, and has manufacturing sites in the UK, US, Brazil, Germany, India and China.

The Teletruk is a unique counterbalanced industrial forklift that is currently produced at an approximate rate of 1000 units per annum. Typically, such products are sold to rental agents who subsequently lease them to the end user. The majority of units are sold within Europe, namely the UK and Germany, the main customers for which include warehouses, builder’s yards and oil rigs.

Each machine houses a seat assembly to accommodate the driver during operation. The current design is twelve years old; it is purchased from an external supplier and assembled to the truck in-house. The life cycle of the existing design, its material selection, production method and end-of-life treatment have not been considered with respect to environment environmental impact or sustainability. As a bought in component, such considerations have previously been of little concern to JCB.

JCB are aware of legislative developments within sectors such as the automotive industry and consequential restrictions imposed by such legislation, aimed at reducing the negative environmental impact of such products throughout the entirety of their lives.

The ‘End-Of-Life Vehicles Directive’ is an example of the relatively new legislation that the automotive industry must accommodate and integrate into any future plans. Such legislation is indicative of that which is anticipated across industry as a whole. While the market for the Teletruk is relatively small in comparison to that of automobiles, it can safely be assumed that strict environmental legislation will become applicable to such industrial machinery, at some point in the near future.

With such legislation on the horizon, JCB are intent upon adopting a proactive approach toward reducing the environmental impacts of their activities. Thus, maximising the potential benefit such a position offers and in particular, minimising the potential disruptive impact experienced, upon legislation introduction.

In accordance with this proactive attitude, JCB are reviewing the lifecycle of many of their products and have identified the driver seat of the Teletruk as a target candidate. Although produced in a relatively small volume, the seat is part of a family of approximately 250 other seats in the JCB range: all of which share some common characteristics throughout their life cycle, and as a result, may also prosper from any environmental improvements made therein.

Project Abstract

Global awareness of the environmental impact of activities is continuously increasing, subsequently, changing consumer and industrial behaviour is evident.

The Teletruk is a counter balanced lift truck produced by JCB, a global leader in the manufacture of construction equipment. Due to the scale of the companies activates, improving the environmental the sustainability of their business practices is a necessity.

This project serves to investigate how these improvements may be achieved, the intention of which is to propose design alterations for the Teletruk seat and reduce its overall environmental impact. This was achieved through the use of a Life Cycle Assessment that encompassed the use of an Eco-Indicator, Eco-Design Web, Spider Diagrams and an Eco-Portfolio. This assessment methodology served to highlight areas of the product system with significant environmental impacts.

The outcome of the assessment enabled conceptual designs to be developed, ranging from realistic solutions to more radical proposals. From the ideas generated; materials substitution, design for disassembly and end-of-life recovery, were identified as being the most feasible solutions, offering a high reduction in environmental impact without the need for significant investment.

The successful outcome accommodates inevitable future legislation to be met and allow JCB to maintain their competitive advantage.
 

Development and Experimentation

The validity of the LCA and extent of interpretation possible are a function of the data available. To provide a basic understanding of the environmental impact of the existing product system (within the boundary) and identify core areas of concern, general information regarding the lifecycle of the seat and its constituent components is required, including; expected life, need for maintenance/replacement and EOL scenario. Information relating to material types, quantities and production methods is also required, and for each component, material or process, a representative eco-indicator value is needed.

For the level of investigation intended, excessive detail of data is not required, only a sufficient amount to develop a good understanding of the product system, with a reliable and representative supporting quantitative assessment. In the absence of such information, assumptions will be made (and documented) or features excluded from the system boundary.

Direct data sources will be provided by JCB and KAB. Product disassembly also serves as a data source relating to materials and product design, from which upstream processes can be identified and investigated.

Results

An Eco-Indicator 99 assessment was carried out on the JCB Teletruck seat assembly; the results of the assessment are included on the following pages.

The results indicate that 79% of the Environmental impact occurs during the production phase of the product. The majority of this production value is related to the extraction and processing of the steel at 25.5% and 24.5% respectively.

The other production processes and materials had a lower environmental impact according to this model. However it should be noted that when comparing the steel and the polymer components there is approximately 15kg of steel and just 4kg of polymers. If the Eco-indicator value is compare per kg then steel has a value of 86 and the polymers range from 240 to 490. Clearly the polymers are potentially much more harmful than the steel, especially since steel can easily be recycled at end of life.

In use the seat scores relatively low compared to the production with just 19.6 eco-indicator points with the 2 main sources of points being the transport of the steel from China to the UK and the replacement of the lower foam and cover three times in the products life.

The end-of-life or disposal part of the Eco-indicator tool is perhaps most surprising for the seat, making up just 1.3% of the total eco-indicator points, this was based upon a worst case scenario, where none of the materials in the seat are recovered the entire seat is land filled.

Interestingly if just the steel parts of the seat were removed and recycled over 1000 eco-indicator points could be recovered this is approximately 20% of all points throughout the products lifecycle.

Hazardous Materials/Waste: The JCB Teletruk operator seat does not include any materials that are considered to be hazardous. However, the foam used as a comfortable seat backing does produce hazardous waste if it is burned or incinerated which could potentially happen upon disposal of the seat. Therefore the seat cannot score perfectly for this section.

There are more environmentally foams available on the market. The design of these foams has been driven by recent legislation that has been implemented by the ELV and concerns take back of automobiles. These foams lower the content of PUR from seat foams which significantly reduces the hazardous emissions produced during incineration.

Time Required to Dismantle: The seat was dismantled using basic tools by two members of the group. The complete dismantling exercise took approximately 3 hours to complete. Considering that industry professionals will have access to power tools, an advanced knowledge of the seat and an instruction plan on how best to dismantle each component it can be estimated that one individual would take approximately 1-2 hours to disassembly the product. This is a fairly long time and means that only 4 seats could be realistically dismantled in a working day. As a result the score assigned for this section is relatively high as limited design for disassembly considerations have been taken by the seat designers.

Design for disassembly principles could be effectively introduced to the seat. These principles would significantly reduce the time take to dismantle the seat which increases operator efficiency and improves the potential to reduce the environmental impact of the seat at the end of its life.

Material/Product Labelling: The material and product labelling within the seat was non-existent. Once disassembled the group could not identify a single material with 100% confidence and further enquiries had to be made to classify each material. This lack of labelling reduces the recyclability of the seat. Materials cannot be divided into compatible groups until the exact material type is known with confidence. Contacting suppliers and collecting this information is time consuming and therefore carries expense. These additional time and cost implications mean that the recycling of the JCB seat is not economically viable and as a result companies will not attempt to dispose of the product in an environmentally conscious manner at the end of its life.

By labelling the materials disassembly units will be able to sort materials as they are removed from the seat which increases the potential for recycling and therefore reduces environmental impact. This issue could be effectively resolved by marking each material within the seat with a distinguishing name that enables engineers to clearly identify material type and dispose of the components effectively.

As a result of absolutely no material or product labelling the seat scored the lowest possible mark for this section.

Recycling Rate: As explained previously throughout various sections an example of end-of-life disposal of the operator seat is hard to find. This is due to the fact that the seats are relatively new designs and have not yet reached end-of-life. Also, once the seats are no longer required on JCB Teletruk’s they are reused by other companies on different machinery. In conclusion, the end-of-life for JCB Teletruk’s is in-fact very good. However, predictions suggest that as and when a seat does reach the end of its usable life, it can no longer be maintained, repaired and consequently reused the seat will most likely be dumped on landfill. This is due to a combination of the materials used and the cost and hassle associated with disassembling the seat. Simple design measures that utilise recyclable materials and design for disassembly features have the potential to considerably improve the recycling rate of the seat and ensure, as far as possible that materials are not dumped in landfill sites.

As the recycling rate is therefore untested and predictions suggest that it will not be very good the seat has been given a low score for this section. This score can always be re-evaluated upon the collection of data that documents how seats tend to be disposed of at end-of-life.

Input of Recycled Materials: Currently the materials used to manufacture the seat are all obtained from raw materials, with the possible exception of steel, which may include some recycled elements. Once again due to lack of labelling and a complex supplier chain this information is hard to obtain yet the group concluded that there is dramatic scope for improvement when concerning the use of recycled materials. As a result the input of recycled materials section does not score very well on the spider diagram.

Reduction of Material Use: Reduction of material use provides environmental benefits as well as reduced material costs for the manufacturer. As a result it is natural for most designers to eliminate the use of material as much as possible during the primary design stages. This material elimination is evident in the seat design and consequently the score for this section is fairly good. Whether the designer’s motivation was too reduce environmental impact or reduce material costs some effort has been made to minimise material use. However, the group concluded that the material used could be further reduced by optimising the design and allocating different materials for different components. Therefore, there is scope for improvement and the seat was not assigned the lowest score on the spider diagram.

Energy Use in Production: The energy used to produce the JCB Teletruk operator seat throughout its entire lifecycle is relatively substantial. Energy is consumed throughout all stages of the manufacture from the extraction of raw materials to the final union with the Teletruk. The list of energy sources and energy consumption is endless and extremely complex. However, there is significant potential to reduce this energy use.

The reasoning behind the decision to grade the seat as only a 4 out of 5 is justified by the fact that although energy use is substantial there are many products on the market that consume significantly more energy during production than the Teletruk seat. Even to the extent that similar products produced by other industrial machine seat manufacturers are considerably larger and more complex than the JCB seat and as a result energy consumption is greater. However, a score of 4 is not a good score and the potential re-designs should address this issue to see if energy consumption can be reduced.

Total Energy Used: The total energy use scores similarly to the energy use in production. This is due to the fact that once the seat has been manufactured apart from the replacement of the seat covers at end-of-life the seat consumes no energy during use. Energy consumption during use could be linked to the increased energy consumption of the JCB Teletruk engine due to the weight of the seat. However, when considering the weight of the truck itself and the fact that trucks of this nature are laden with steel to increase their weight and as a result their load carry capacity the additional weight of the seat is negligible. Any weight reductions created by re-design methods would therefore have a negligible influence and may possibly mean that additional weight needs to be added to the JCB Teletruk in order to counter balance it correctly. Hence the total energy use is directly linked to the energy use in production and any reduction in the energy use during production will significantly impact the total energy use.
 

Conclusions

The spider diagram analysis has highlighted a number of areas that could be developed in order to reduce the environmental impact of the seat. The most noticeable of these areas include: the time required to dismantle the seat, material/product labelling, recycling rate, input of recycled materials and energy use. In most cases simple design alterations could provide significant environmental benefits. In order to make full use of the spider diagram analysis the design alterations proposed should be explored in greater depth to ensure that any changes made do not have negative environmental impacts at differing points in the seats lifecycle.

Overall the seats environmental performance is not too bad when compared with other industrial products. However, there is significant potential for improvement and with the global situation at the moment each and every product should look to reduce its impact upon the environment no matter how insignificant the changes may seem.