Patent ID: 6811344
Filing Date: 2004-11-02
Classification: G06F,Y10T

Abstract:
A computer-aided product designing assistant apparatus for assisting designing of an environmentally conscious product by presenting at least one design guideline to be adopted in designing the environmentally conscious product, the apparatus comprising:a database storing a plurality of design guidelines for each product and evaluation values assigned to each design guideline in relation to an End of Life (EOL) issue, the evaluation values assigned to each design guideline being capable of indicating an effectiveness of each design guideline in resolving the EOL issue, the EOL issue representing an issue to be accounted at an end of a life of each environmentally conscious product for realizing recycle or reuse of at least a part of each product in a life cycle; and a processing unit for determining a relative importance level of the EOL issue for a product to be designed according to a relationship between a product subjective value based lifetime and a physical useful lifetime of the product to be designed, selecting at least one design guideline regarded as the best for adopting for the product to be designed from said plurality of design guidelines stored in the database according to the evaluation values stored in the database and the relative importance level of the EOL issue determined for the product to be designed, and presenting said at least one design guideline selected for the product to be designed.