SYNOPSIS

Climate change is now ranked as one of humanity’s greatest challenges. With rising public concerns and mounting pressures from NGOs as well as international treaties and governmental legislations, the move towards sustainability is now eminent.  These recent developments have a causal effect onto how we conduct our lives. In product design, sustainability affects how the design of a product has to change from conceptualisation to manufacturing, distribution and retirement.  In other words, there is now an urgency to re-think the way we do things. In this talk, using systems thinking and systems theory to embed sustainability into product design is considered and its effects upon environmental improvements are discussed. First principles of a system will be re-visited and deconstructed to investigate how sustainability can be incorporated into product design.


BIODATA OF SPEAKER

Dr. Yap Eng Hwa is an Assistant Professor with the University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus. Currently he is the Course Director for MSc Mechanical Engineering. Dr. Yap’s research work at the University is focused largely on renewable energy and sustainability, carbon capture and storage (CCS) deployment and policy, sustainable transport as well as project management. He joined the Department of Mechanical, Materials and Manufacturing Engineering in 2008 after completing his PhD at University College London. Dr. Yap’s previous work in marine and offshore engineering involved looking into the generation of clean energy using stranded offshore natural gas with a ‘floating power station’.