ECODESIGN CASE STUDIES FOR FURNITURE COMPANIES USING THE ANALYTIC HIERARCHY PROCESS

The purpose of this paper is to propose a method to assess the degree of the implementation of ecodesign in manufacturing companies. This method was developed based on a multi-criteria decision support method known as analytic hierarchy process (AHP). It was twice applied in three longitudinal case studies in furniture companies. Ecodesign constructs were extracted from the literature related to environmental practices and weighted according to the AHP method, allowing for a determination of the relative importance of the constructs for each company. Finally, the team answered a questionnaire for each company to check each item’s degree of application of these processes. One year later, the method was applied again to the same three companies. By comparing the assessed relative importance of each ecodesign construct and the degree of its application, it was possible for us to observe the relation of the priorities of the companies to their eco-conception