G-SAM – Guidelines for sustainable agricultural mechanization (SAM)

G-SAM provides a set of sustainability-oriented design guidelines which can be used to:
1. Analyze the sustainability of an agricultural machinery (AM) based product-service system (PSS) for the small farms of developing countries on the three sustainability dimensions and throughout its lifecycle.
2. Determine sustainability priorities for design intervention; and
3. Generate sustainability-oriented design ideas.

It aids in
• connecting the “technical, economical and engineering aspects” of machinery design with the allied service ecosystem
• establishing the “linkages and inter-dependencies with other sectors”
• to offer a holistic view of conducting agriculture.

G-SAM is designed primarily for the use of designers and AM design engineers. These two groups are mainly involved in the design and development of AM. G-SAM can be used by others as well if the team involves designers or AM design engineers. Its assessment indicators and design guidelines help develop “mechanization that is economically feasible, environmentally sensitive and socially acceptable.” It targets PSS level assessment and design and can cater to the product, service, and system levels. It caters to three dimensions of sustainability: environmental, economic, and social. It uses rapid sustainability assessment indicators to conduct the evaluation and can be used even when less information is available. That is mostly the case in small farms of developing countries and at the design process’s fuzzy front-end. The design guidelines provide open-ended ideation cues to guide, educate, and inform a designer during the design process. It also aids designers in conducting analysis and ideation simultaneously.

The assessment indicators and design guidelines are drawn from indicator-based assessment tools from agricultural practices, Sustainable PSS design, and Lifecycle Design, along with literature research reporting the short and long-term impact of AM on the soil, air, water, energy, biodiversity, waste, and climate.