Use of the Consumption Performance Sustainability Index as a Decisional Tool at a Preliminary Stage of Project Development

The choice of materials and manufacturing processes based on the design of industrial products depends on several factors related to common prac- tice, availability of materials and machines and reliability of the production pro- cesses. Furthermore, industrial products must achieve a zero-defect policy and be safe and sustainable by design. This work implements the Consumption Performance Sustainability Index and extends its use to compare two Additive Manufacturing processes that transform the same polymers into a reference geometry. The index considers the part design and production parameters related to the material transformation due to the manufacturing processes. In particular, the product’s mechanical performance, materials consumption, and energy used for manufacturing. It is here developed to evaluate, at an early stage, the product design by using the production equipment’s available technical data, manufacturing times and material consumption - estimated through specific software - and other data from the scientific literature. The index is proposed to assess the sustainability of products and find the best manufacturing alternative as a complementary tool to standard approaches based on life cycle sustainability assessment. The procedure includes optimising the geometry using topology or generative design, assessing applied stresses and production times, and evaluating the performance of the transformed material based on part orientation to optimise the manufacturing process.