Sustainable Design Software

Sustainable Design Software helps organizations incorporate environmental and circularity considerations into product development through structured product data, sustainability assessments and supporting evidence.

Unlike traditional design tools that focus primarily on geometry, engineering specifications or product configuration, sustainable design management focuses on questions such as:

• How durable and reliable is the product?
• Can components be repaired or replaced?
• Can the product be upgraded rather than replaced?
• Are products or components suitable for reuse?
• Can materials be separated and recovered?
• What recycled content is incorporated?
• Can the product or its components be remanufactured?
• What substances are present?
• What environmental impacts occur across the lifecycle?
• Is sustainability information available from suppliers?

These considerations are becoming increasingly important within European product policy. Regulation (EU) 2024/1781, the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR), establishes a framework under which ecodesign requirements can address durability, reliability, reusability, upgradability, repairability, resource efficiency, recycled content, remanufacturing, recyclability, material recovery, environmental impacts and waste generation.

Sustainable design software helps businesses turn these broad sustainability topics into controlled product-level information that can be reviewed throughout development.

Reliable sustainability assessments start with reliable product information.

ComplyMarket enables companies to structure a product from the finished product through its components, materials and substances. A BOM can represent how these different levels are connected, providing visibility into the actual composition and hierarchy of a product.

This structure allows sustainability teams to work with the same underlying product architecture used for compliance and product data management.

For example, a design team evaluating a material substitution can identify the affected material, determine which components contain it and understand which finished products use those components. Product tree functionality also provides visibility into direct and indirect components, materials and substances.

This traceability is particularly valuable for organizations managing complex products with large supplier networks or multi-level BOMs.

Material efficiency is a central element of sustainable product design because sustainability depends not only on how much material is used, but also on how effectively products retain value throughout their lifecycle.

ComplyMarket supports structured material-efficiency assessments across several important design characteristics:

• Durability and reliability
• Repairability
• Reusability
• Upgradability
• Recyclability
• Recoverability
• Remanufacturability

The platform includes Material Efficiency Attributes using AI for assessments covering durability and reliability; repairability, reusability and upgradability; recyclability and recoverability; and remanufacturability. It also provides Material Efficiency Parameters at BOM-item level so these characteristics can be reviewed and maintained.

These assessments can help product and engineering teams identify where design improvements may be appropriate rather than treating sustainability as an evaluation performed only after development has finished.

Increasing the use of recycled materials can be an important part of circular product design, but recycled-content information needs to remain connected to identifiable products and materials.

ComplyMarket provides functionality for maintaining Post Consumer Recycled Content values for BOM items, with values that can be reviewed and edited within the platform.

This enables teams to organize recycled-content information alongside broader material-efficiency data instead of maintaining a separate sustainability spreadsheet.

Combined with product composition and substance information, this can provide a more complete view of the materials behind a product and help teams evaluate material-selection alternatives with greater transparency.

Sustainable design decisions should consider environmental performance across the lifecycle rather than concentrating on a single product characteristic.

A lighter material, for example, may reduce material consumption but create different impacts during manufacturing, transportation, use or end-of-life processing. Similarly, increasing durability may involve design changes that should be evaluated against broader lifecycle effects.

ComplyMarket's Sustainability Compliance Management functionality includes Life Cycle Assessment information at BOM-item level, with fields for GHG emissions in kg CO₂e, energy in MJ, water in m³ and a study document. Values can also be maintained for individual items.

Connecting lifecycle information with structured product data can help sustainability and engineering teams compare design decisions in a more consistent context.

Many sustainability characteristics cannot be evaluated using internal information alone.

Material composition, recycled content, manufacturing information and other product characteristics may originate from suppliers. Sustainable Design Software therefore needs a structured process for collecting and reviewing supplier information.

ComplyMarket's Sustainability Questionnaire Management supports question groups containing multiple questions and pages. These groups can be assembled into questionnaire packages for supplier communication.

This approach can help companies standardize sustainability data requests across suppliers rather than repeatedly requesting information through independent emails and spreadsheets.

Supplier responses can then support product-level sustainability assessments, procurement discussions and follow-up when required information remains incomplete.

A practical sustainable design process can be organized around the following workflow:

The objective is not to reduce sustainable design to a single score. Different products have different functions, technical constraints, supply chains and sustainability priorities. A structured system allows these factors to be evaluated transparently and consistently.

The regulatory importance of sustainable product design is increasing.

The ESPR provides the framework for product-specific or horizontal ecodesign requirements. These requirements can address both product performance and product information, and the exact obligations are introduced progressively rather than applying identically to every product at once.

The Commission's 2025–2030 ESPR and Energy Labelling Working Plan identifies priority areas including steel, aluminium, textiles, furniture, tyres and mattresses, together with horizontal measures concerning repairability and aspects of recyclability and recycled content for electrical and electronic equipment.

For companies, this makes structured sustainability data increasingly relevant during product development. Preparing product architecture, material data, supplier information and sustainability attributes early can make future requirement assessment considerably more manageable.

Sustainable product design and product information management are becoming increasingly connected.

The Digital Product Passport is intended to support access to relevant product information as product-specific requirements are introduced. Under the ESPR framework, DPP obligations are defined progressively through applicable product rules rather than through one identical requirement for every product.

ComplyMarket allows product categories to contain configurable attributes that are reflected in Product Information. Its DPP functionality can generate passports using identifiers such as an item number, batch number, manufacturer or supplier part number, or serial number.

Maintaining sustainability information in a structured product environment can therefore support both present-day design decisions and future product-information requirements.

Sustainable product development typically crosses several business functions.

Engineering understands technical feasibility. Procurement manages suppliers and sourcing alternatives. Sustainability teams assess environmental performance. Compliance teams monitor applicable regulatory requirements. Product managers must balance these inputs against commercial and technical objectives.

A shared product-data structure helps these functions work from consistent information.

Instead of sustainability assessments being disconnected from the BOM, supplier evidence and compliance status, organizations can link those information streams around identifiable products, components and materials. ComplyMarket's broader platform already connects structured product data with compliance, sustainability, supplier and market-access workflows.

This can make sustainable product development more repeatable across different products and product families.

A structured sustainable design process can help organizations:

• Establish traceability between sustainability information and the product BOM
• Identify material and component-level sustainability improvement opportunities
• Evaluate durability, repairability, reuse, upgrading and recyclability characteristics
• Maintain recycled-content information in a controlled environment
• Connect supplier sustainability information with relevant products
• Incorporate lifecycle information into product-development discussions
• Reduce dependence on disconnected sustainability spreadsheets
• Improve collaboration between engineering, ESG, procurement and compliance teams
• Strengthen documentation behind sustainability-related decisions
• Build a stronger data foundation for ecodesign and DPP readiness

The result is a practical framework for moving sustainability considerations closer to product-development decisions rather than addressing them only during final compliance checks or sustainability reporting.

ComplyMarket can support Sustainable Design Software requirements by bringing product structure, material information, sustainability assessments, supplier communication and regulatory management into a connected environment.

Companies can build multi-level BOMs covering finished products, components, materials and substances; maintain documents and product relationships; manage sustainability legislation; create structured supplier sustainability questionnaires; review lifecycle information; and monitor sustainability status across products, components, materials and suppliers. Sustainability reporting within the platform includes item-, legislation-, supplier- and supplier/item-level views, helping teams identify missing information and areas requiring follow-up.

Material Efficiency functionality extends this foundation with structured assessments covering durability, reliability, repairability, reusability, upgradability, recyclability, recoverability and remanufacturability, together with item-level material-efficiency parameters and Post Consumer Recycled Content information.

By connecting these capabilities with supplier data, LCA information, Product Information and Digital Product Passport workflows, ComplyMarket can help manufacturers create a more traceable and manageable approach to sustainable product design—supporting informed product-development decisions while preparing the underlying data needed for evolving sustainability and ecodesign requirements.