Integration of environmental criteria in the co-design process: Case study of the client/supplier relationship in the french mechanical industry
Abstract
This paper investigates how the environment is taken in account in the client/supplier relationship. This issue is particularly important given the growing influence of suppliers’ design choices on the environmental performance of the client’s product. An empirical study has been performed with twenty companies of the French mechanical industry from SMEs to large multinational companies. The survey highlights the weakness of environmental information exchanges between the different actors, yet comitted in the same design process at different levels