Environmental Impact Assessment During Product Development: A Functional Analysis Based Approach to Life Cycle Assessments

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alissa Santucci ◽  
Marcos Esterman
Keyword(s):  
Functional Analysis ◽  
Life Cycle ◽  
Product Development ◽  
Environmental Impacts ◽  
Systems Engineering ◽  
Business Models ◽  
Life Cycle Assessments ◽  
Bill Of Materials ◽  
Global Environmental ◽  
New Business

As global environmental concerns increase, industries continue to respond prominently to meeting sustainable practice standards through technological innovations and new business models. By implementing sustainable practices companies can create a competitive advantage and ultimately drive profitability in addition to mitigating environmental impacts. However, this potential is limited because current comprehensive environmental metrics, including Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), cannot be completed until after the product bill of materials is developed and the manufacturing process has been defined. In addition, the current LCA standards do not provide practitioners with a sufficiently standardized method of conducting an assessment, which makes its application to product development less reliable. This research develops a framework by which environmental impacts of a product system can be assessed and addressed during product development using a more standardized and precise LCA method. The basis of this method integrates systems engineering tools and a functional analysis based approach to LCA. Using this framework, designers can easily develop, classify, and explore different product designs based on predictive environmental impacts.

Sustainable life cycle offers through cooperation

2015 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 4-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia Selberherr
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Life Cycle ◽  
Business Model ◽  
Value Creation ◽  
Business Models ◽  
Service Providers ◽  
Construction Sector ◽  
Content Type ◽  
New Business ◽  
Societal Level

Purpose – Sustainable buildings bear enormous potential benefits for clients, service providers, and our society. To release this potential a change in business models is required. The purpose of this paper is to develop a new business model with the objective of proactively contributing to sustainable development on the societal level and thereby improving the economic position of the service providers in the construction sector. Design/methodology/approach – The modeling process comprises two steps, the formal structuring and the contextual configuration. In the formal structuring systems theory is used and two levels are analytically separated. The outside view concerns the business model’s interaction with the environment and its impact on sustainability. The inside view focusses on efficient value creation for securing sustainability. The logically deductively developed business model is subsequently theory-led substantiated with Giddens’ structuration theory. Findings – The relevant mechanisms for the development of a new service offer, which creates a perceivable surplus value to the client and contributes to sustainable development on the societal level, are identified. The requirements for an efficient value creation process with the objective of optimizing the service providers’ competitive position are outlined. Research limitations/implications – The model is developed logically deductively based on literature and embedded in a theoretical framework. It has not yet been empirically tested. Practical implications – Guidelines for the practical implementation of more sustainable business models for the provision of life cycle service offers are developed. Social implications – The construction industry’s impact requires it to contribute proactively to a more sustainable development of the society. Originality/value – This paper analyzes the role for the players in the construction sector in proactively contributing to sustainable development on the societal level. One feasible strategy is proposed with a new business model, which aims at cooperatively optimizing buildings and infrastructures and taking the responsibility for the operating phase via guarantees.

Waste management and environmental impact of absorbent hygiene products: A review

2020 ◽  
pp. 0734242X2095427
Author(s):  
Maribel Velasco Perez ◽  
Perla Xochitl Sotelo Navarro ◽  
Alethia Vazquez Morillas ◽  
Rosa María Espinosa Valdemar ◽  
Jéssica Paola Hermoso Lopez Araiza
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle ◽  
Waste Management ◽  
Environmental Impacts ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Raw Materials ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
Municipal Waste ◽  
Management Options ◽  
Life Cycle Assessments ◽  
Wide Range

Absorbent hygiene products (AHP) have received much interest due to the notion that their end-of-life (EoL) stage has high environmental impacts. Since the use of AHP will continue to rise in the foreseeable future, information that helps with a reduction in the environmental impacts of AHP through their life cycle is needed. This research presents an estimation of AHP in municipal waste, and it also reviews and discusses waste management options, available treatments at bench, pilot or full scale, and life cycle assessments (LCAs) available in the literature. Municipal waste of countries belonging to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development contains on average 2.7% of baby nappies, 4.8% of adult nappies and 0.5% of sanitary pads (in weight), whereas that of Latin-American countries have 7.3%, 3.3%, and 0.9%, respectively. Management options for AHP waste in developed countries are landfilling and incineration, while in developing countries AHP are disposed of in dumpsites and landfills. Most LCAs identify significant environmental impacts in the production of raw materials, while EoL scenarios involving incineration and landfill were found to have a significant contribution to global warming potential. Substitution with alternative products has been suggested as a way of decreasing environmental impacts; however, their use frequently causes a trade-off on different impact categories. Municipalities could use a wide range of policy tools, such as extended producer responsibility systems, bans, levies, ecolabelling, or a combination of these, to reduce the environmental and economic burden of AHP waste.

Toward a Method for Improving Product Architecture Solutions by Integrating Designs for Assembly, Disassembly and Maintenance

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas Dagman ◽  
Rikard Söderberg
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle ◽  
Product Development ◽  
Product Life Cycle ◽  
Development Process ◽  
Business Models ◽  
Design Guidelines ◽  
Product Development Process ◽  
Product Architecture ◽  
Manufacturing Companies ◽  
Maintenance And Repair

New customer demands and increased legislation drive business-oriented companies into new business models focusing on the entire life cycle of the product. This forces the manufacturing companies into service-oriented solutions as a compliment to the original business areas. Takata [1] postulates that “the goal is no longer to produce products in an efficient way, but rather to provide the functions needed by society while minimizing material and energy consumption”. This new situation affects the product requirements as well as product development process (PD). When focusing on the entire product life cycle, product aspects such as maintenance and repair will receive more attention since the companies will be responsible for them. In the product development process of today, especially in the automotive industry, maintenance and repair aspects (repair and maintenance methods and manuals, for example) are currently taken care of when the product is more or less fully developed. Maintenance and repair requirements are difficult to quantify in terms of core product properties (for vehicles, cost, CO2 emissions, weight, and so on). This leads to difficulties in equally considering maintenance and repair requirements while balancing vast amounts of product requirements. This paper focuses on a comparison and discussion of existing design guidelines affecting the structure and organization of parts in an assembled consumer product, such as Design for Assembly (DFA), Design for Maintenance (DFMa), Design for Service (DFS) and Design for Disassembly (DFD) methods. A tool for evaluation and analyzing product architecture as well as assemblability and maintainability is proposed.

scholarly journals Implementation of an Object-Oriented Life Cycle Assessment Framework Using Functional Analysis and Systems Engineering Principles

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shantanu Gadre ◽  
Marcos Esterman ◽  
Brian K. Thorn
Keyword(s):  
Functional Analysis ◽  
Life Cycle Assessment ◽  
Life Cycle ◽  
Systems Engineering ◽  
Object Oriented ◽  
Integrated System ◽  
Design And Development ◽  
Training Requirements ◽  
Development Phases ◽  
Early Phases

Given that a significant percentage of a product’s impacts are defined during design and development, there is a need to effectively integrate Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) into these early phases. However, the lack of standardized practices, the lack of appropriate modeling approaches, data issues, special training requirements for designers, and uncertainties in the results make it difficult to apply LCA in these early stages. In order to address this gap, this work builds on previous research that integrated system engineering and functional analysis into LCA to develop an object-oriented framework for LCA. The framework is applied to a consumer product and the results of the approach demonstrate the potential for an easy to update and scalable LCA model that facilitates comparability. Each module in this model can be developed separately and integrated effectively into a larger model guided by functional analysis techniques. This framework holds the promise to better integrate LCA into the design and development phases.

scholarly journals Comparing Three Building Life Cycle Assessment Tools for the Canadian Construction Industry

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hayley Cormick
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle Assessment ◽  
Life Cycle ◽  
Construction Industry ◽  
Carbon Emissions ◽  
Black Box ◽  
Assessment Tools ◽  
Life Cycle Assessments ◽  
Bill Of Materials ◽  
Building Life Cycle

This research aims to contribute to quantifying whole building life cycle assessment using various software tools to determine how they can aid the construction industry in reducing carbon emissions, and in particular embodied emissions, through analysis and reporting. The conducted research seeks to examine and compare three whole building life cycle assessment tools; Athena Impact Estimator, Tally and One-Click LCA to relate the input variability to the outputs of the three programs. The three whole building life-cycle assessments were conducted using a case study building with an identical bill of materials and compared to determine the applicability and strengths of one program over another. The research confirmed that the three programs output significantly different results given the variability in scope, allowable program inputs and generated “black-box” back-end calculations, where the outputted whole building life cycle carbon equivalents of One-Click LCA is less than half than of Tally meaning the programs outputs cannot be simply compared side-by-side.

scholarly journals Life Cycle Assessment of Tall Onshore Hybrid Steel Wind Turbine Towers

Energies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (15) ◽  
pp. 3950
Author(s):  
Michaela Gkantou ◽  
Carlos Rebelo ◽  
Charalampos Baniotopoulos
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle ◽  
Wind Turbine ◽  
Environmental Impacts ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Hybrid Structure ◽  
Environmental Response ◽  
Structural System ◽  
Life Cycle Assessments ◽  
Wind Velocities ◽  
Wind Turbine Towers

Increasing needs for taller wind turbines with bigger capacities, intended for places with high wind velocities or at higher altitudes, have led to new technologies in the wind energy industry. A recently introduced structural system for onshore wind turbine towers is the hybrid steel tower. Comprehension of the environmental response of this hybrid steel structural system is warranted. Even though life cycle assessments (LCAs) for conventional wind turbine tubular towers exist, the environmental performance of this new hybrid structure has not been reported. The present paper examines the LCA of 185 m tall hybrid towers. Considerations made for the LCA procedure are meticulously described, including particular attention at the erection and transportation stage. The highest environmental impacts arise during the manufacturing stage followed by the erection stage. The tower is the component with the largest carbon emissions and energy requirements. The obtained LCA footprints of hybrid towers are also compared to the literature data on conventional towers, resulting in similar environmental impacts.

scholarly journals Environmental impacts along intensity gradients in Norwegian dairy production as evaluated by life cycle assessments

2017 ◽  
Vol 158 ◽  
pp. 50-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Kjersti Bakken ◽  
Kristin Daugstad ◽  
Astrid Johansen ◽  
Anne-Grete Roer Hjelkrem ◽  
Gustav Fystro ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle ◽  
Environmental Impacts ◽  
Dairy Production ◽  
Life Cycle Assessments ◽  
Norwegian Dairy
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