Embedding environmental and circularity metrics in product development decisions: A structured decision-support approach for early-stage industrial concept evaluation

Environmental and circularity metrics are increasingly used to assess products, yet their influence on early-stage product development decisions often remains limited. This paper develops a configurable, reference-product-based decision-support architecture for embedding selected environmental and circularity metrics in industrial concept evaluation. Rather than introducing new metrics or decision methods, the architecture aligns decision context, assessment perspectives and boundaries, input maturity, objective and concept development, project criteria, stakeholder preferences, and comparative evaluation. Two exploratory industrial cases provide formative demonstrations of a material-focused configuration: the structural redesign of a long-lived component and a targeted material substitution within an ATM subsystem. In both cases, the Material Circularity Indicator and a screening-level embodied-CO₂ estimate for upstream material provision were combined with cost and integration criteria using FAHP-derived weights and SAW aggregation. Preferred alternatives were conditional on stakeholder-derived weights and key assumptions. Sensitivity analyses revealed both locally stable and reversible rankings, depending on the case and preference structure. Embedding the metrics did not ensure that they determined the preferred alternative, but made system boundaries, assumptions, trade-offs, and preference dependence explicit and reviewable. The contribution lies in structuring the context-specific integration of environmental and circularity metrics within a reference-product-based decision architecture for early industrial concept evaluation.