18. Environmental Requirements

Environmental Stages

The environmental conditions that a product can meet can vary dramatically through the various stages between manufacture and its disposal. Consider the three main environmental stages important in defining a product.

Storage

The product needs to be designed, along with its packaging and associated instruction or user guidance information, to withstand the prevailing storage conditions and environments encountered. It is not just the environment that affects design requirements for storage. Shelf life requirements are determined by the time the product will spend on a shelf awaiting sale or use. The combination of environmental conditions and shelf life define the storage requirement.

Various product storage environments will be encountered throughout the product's life. It is important for many products that the range of environmental conditions be well understood and documented within the product definition. In particular, the following environments should be considered: component or raw material storage prior to manufacture; work in process storage during manufacture; finished goods storage at the factory; storage in transit during transportation; storage in distribution warehouses; storage in customer premises prior to use; storage during use; storage at the end of the product's life.

Transportation

The transportation environment also needs to be understood by the designer to ensure there is no susceptibility to the transportation environment or risk of damage to the transportation system from the product. For example, one of the possible causes investigated by crash investigators sifting through the remains of an aircraft crash, was the deterioration and eventual ignition of certain types of batteries contained within products carried as cargo on the flight. Modern transportation systems have created a great number of different environments and environmental conditions for a product to withstand that may be at variance with the normal operating or usage conditions of the product.

Normal Operation

The final environment considered is that of the normal operation or utilisation of the product. This is the environment most often considered to the detriment of the other categories. The full range of environments encountered and hence threat to the product's integrity during normal operation or usage is likely to be vast for most products. This range needs to understood and documented within the product definition.