Hey there designers, and lovers of stuff. I wanted to offer a very brief summary on the manufacturing side of products in hopes of spurring thought the next time you design something to be mass produced through the outline of a simple production flow diagram. As designers, we are often never tasked with understanding the process in which the things we design are made, unless we have a client (master) that demands that their product be “eco riendly” the mystification of how things come to be and their environmental impacts are never scrutinized.
I chose to take a snapshot of the production process out of an LCA (life-cycle assessment) of an aluminum truck wheel that Five Winds analyzed to show just what goes into making a single product (1 material).
As yo u can see the complexity of a one material product can be daunting. Notice the inputs (water, energy, material) and the outputs (waste, emsission, product). These all make up the embodied energy of that product. So, keep in mind just how much work goes into creating that elaborate thing-a-ma-bob next time. In the name of your job, furthering your understanding of process, wowing a possible client, and of course limiting the impact of your design on the environment.