Life cycle thinking

Life cycle thinking refers to the consideration of environmental impacts throughout the various stages of a product's existence and the endeavor to minimize these impacts whenever feasible. It aims to prevent the transfer of environmental burdens from one stage to another. Additionally, life cycle thinking acknowledges the role of technological advancement in addressing environmental concerns. This approach is adopted by companies in the development of eco-friendly products, by consumers in making conscious product selections, and by governments in establishing regulatory standards to mitigate environmental effects. It involves identifying key areas for reduction while also promoting consumer awareness. Approaches There are many different approaches to life cycle thinking that all involve looking at life cycle-generated impacts and ways to minimize these impacts. An important component is the avoidance of burden shifting, which ensures that improvements in one stage are

Enhancing the application efficiency of life cycle assessment for industrial uses

Gerald Rebitzer

Sustainable development is an issue that is gaining more and more relevance in all areas of society, though specifically in industry. In order to move towards the goal of sustainability, life cycle thinking is an essential element. For the implementation of life cycle thinking in industry life cycle management (LCM) has been proposed as the general concept. However, the assessment of environmental impacts with the method of life cycle assessment, which is essentially the only tool available for this purpose, has been limited in industrial practice due to involved complexity and the resulting necessary effort and know-how. Therefore, this thesis proposed improved methods that enhance the application efficiency of LCA for industrial uses. After a short introduction in Chapter 1, new developments for the more efficient application of LCA for environmental assessments are presented in Chapter 2 – both for situations where pre-existing data are available and for studies, where no or very limited information of the involved unit processes and elementary flows exist. This concerns the modeling based on reusable elements as well as limiting system boundaries by recommended cut-offs. Specific and easy to apply recommendations for using cut-off rules are proposed. Chapter 3 explores another path, namely the usage of LCA models for life cycle costing. A consistent framework of the economic life cycle based assessment in sustainable development is proposed and tested. Essentially, one can conclude that the deployment of the systems approach and underlying model of LCA is extremely useful also for conducting economic analyses, while causing very little additional efforts. Chapter 4 elaborates case studies, one for an automotive component, and one for the service of waste water treatment. Detailed LCA results are presented and discussed, and the aforementioned methods in regards to a more efficient LCA "from scratch" and relating to life cycle costing are tested and demonstrated. The thesis concludes with some concise recommendations for future research and development activities in relation to a better usage of LCA and related life cycle approaches.

EPFL2005

A Methodology for Holistic Lifecycle Approach as Decision Support System for Closed-loop Lifecycle Management

Fatih Karakoyun

Sustainability of their products and practices provides companies with a competitive set of methods and tools to maintain, improve and expand customer and supplier relationships and to ensure access to strategic markets. Companies pay a lot of attention to produce more sustainable products and contribute to the overall sustainability. Most of the companies manage to use lighter materials or change the material with a recyclable one or try to decrease the energy used for manufacturing. However most of these attempts are related to only one part of the life cycle or one aspect of sustainability. In spite the fact that sustainability is thought to be related with the environmental aspects of the product, it is a broad concept and has economic and social dimensions. This makes the evaluation of sustainability a very complex matter. On top of that, to achieve a certain level of sustainability, it is necessary to take into account the whole life cycle of products (life cycle perspective) from material extraction and manufacturing to use and disposal when a decision has to be made about sustainability performance. In order to evaluate the sustainability performance of the products it is necessary to combine a number of life cycle evaluation methodologies; life cycle assessment (LCA) for environmental aspects, life cycle costing (LCC) for economic aspects, and social life cycle assessment for (S-LCA) for social aspects. Product lifecycle management system help to manage product related information through its life cycle. However, generally the capabilities of PLM systems are limited to the operations of one company or in some cases it might have been extended to their 1st degree partners. Additionally, the information flow of the product is often restricted to the beginning of life (BOL) phase. Closed-Loop Lifecycle Management is a more recent concept which goes beyond the limits of traditional PLM systems and is targeting seamless information flow across all phases of the life cycle. Closed-loop PLM systems use product embedded identification devices (PEIDs) and enables to gather and distribute life cycle information through the life cycle of a product more precisely. This information may further be used for evaluation of the products sustainability performance. The methods and tools for sustainability assessment are constrained with the availability of data. Closed-loop PLM systems are capable of gathering life cycle data and processing it in order to make informed decisions towards sustainability. A Closed-Loop Lifecycle Management system containing a DSS configured with the holistic life cycle approach will be an efficient tool to evaluate and improve the sustainability performance of products. The proposed methodology in this dissertations benefits from the comprehensiveness of the life cycle thinking and integrates the tools for evaluation of all aspects of sustainability. It has been applied to three test cases and validated. Finally, the results of this work have been published in conferences and journal papers.

EPFL2015

Enhancing the application efficiency of life cycle assessment for industrial uses

Gerald Rebitzer

EPFL2005

A Methodology for Holistic Lifecycle Approach as Decision Support System for Closed-loop Lifecycle Management

Fatih Karakoyun

EPFL2015

Enhancing the application efficiency of life cycle assessment for industrial uses

A Methodology for Holistic Lifecycle Approach as Decision Support System for Closed-loop Lifecycle Management

Environmental performance indicators and application of Life Cycle thinking to product development and corporate management a detailed LCM-related excerpt of the fifth international conference on ecobalances November 6–8, 2002, Tsukuba, Japan

Enhancing the application efficiency of life cycle assessment for industrial uses

A Methodology for Holistic Lifecycle Approach as Decision Support System for Closed-loop Lifecycle Management

Environmental performance indicators and application of Life Cycle thinking to product development and corporate management a detailed LCM-related excerpt of the fifth international conference on ecobalances November 6–8, 2002, Tsukuba, Japan