Life Cycle Assessments for Design Engineers in NPD and R&D

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The latest PLM Green Global Alliance post is authored by Klaus Brettschneider, principal moderator for our Life Cycle Assessment study theme and Director of Sustainability Products for PLM consultancy Linx-AS.

Engineers and designers in New Product Development (NPD) and Research & Development (R&D) play a critical role in shaping the sustainability of products, processes, and systems. A McKinsey study documented that while product R&D in the manufacturing industry only accounts for 5% of a product’s cost, the decisions made then influence up to 80% of the resources ultimately consumed, thus defining the product’s environmental footprint.

As a result, NPD and R&D departments are increasingly expected to incorporate aspects of sustainability into their product designs and usage. A holistic understanding of the product’s environmental impact throughout its entire life cycle, from the material sourcing to manufacturing, distribution, usage, repair, and end-of-life disposition becomes necessary.

Conducting a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is rapidly becoming today’s standard method to analyze a product’s or process’s environmental footprint. Around the world, LCAs may be called something else, like eco-balances or Ökobilanz in German, underlining the quantified balancing aspect of polluting, resource-extracting, and other impacts.

LCAs require extensive product data across the entire lifecycle on the inputs, outputs, and processes involved. Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) strategies and solutions are ideal for managing all these data and workflows, including material properties, product structures, virtual or digital twins, and manufacturing processes. These data sets can then be leveraged to develop a Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) and conduct Life Cycle Impact Assessments (LCIAs). PLM, especially when combined with rapidly-evolving LCA and AI capabilities, accelerates product optimization by identifying efficiency improvements, cost reductions, and environmental performance enhancements. By combining LCA capabilities into their PLM solutions, organizations can make more informed decisions to minimize environmental impacts while maximizing product performance and customer value.

In the past few years, LCA and Design for Sustainability (DfS) software applications have been introduced from well-established PLM, ERP, and SCM solution providers and innovative start-ups focused on particular industries. These sustainability-related solutions now include the following, many which PLM Green has previously written about from our interviews with providers:

What many of these solutions have in common is that they provide designers access to LCA databases that aid in performing product design tradeoff simulations, including components from the upstream supply chain and downstream customer use cases.

However, these utilities can prove inconsistent if not misleading when their users do not fully understand the underlying standards and methods. This can lead to flawed design decisions as a result. One example reported in the International Journal for Life Cycle Assessment is a recent controversy about LCA results from examining “Requirements for comparative life cycle assessment studies for single-use and reusable packaging and products.”

Accordingly, product engineers who aim to incorporate LCA into their design processes should familiarize themselves with numerous terms, principles, best practices standards, and regulations. While ISO 14040/14044 are the most commonly used guidelines, the 2006 standard leaves ample freedom to employ different LCA techniques, such as comparative or consequential LCA, input-output analysis, and hybrid methods to name a few. Over recent years, the LCA solutions community has developed new strategies and supporting standards to improve the efficiency and quality of impact assessments. These include ReCiPe, Eco-indicator 99, PAS 2050, PAS 2060, and the GHG Protocol Product Standard among others.

Over the next few PLM Green posts we will dive into LCA’s core terms and functions, emphasizing their importance to the Design for Sustainability process. These include:

1. Goal and Scope Definition ensure that the LCA study addresses specific objectives, boundaries, and functional units relevant to the assessed product or service. The goal of an LCA can be to compare two products or several production alternatives. However, it can also be a partial LCA that only considers the impacts of direct company activities from gate to gate. Understanding the goal and scope of an LCA is essential to utilizing its conclusion

2. The Functional Unit defines the function of the product or service being assessed, providing a reference for comparing alternatives within the LCA. They are often exact in comparing specific aspects, like “a paper cup intended for one 350 ml hot drink”—so precise that it may be difficult to generalize for a larger or colder drink. An LCA may require a duration-based Functional Unit, for example, “Service Life” or “Operational Years,” which makes the result of an LCA difficult to use if the task is to find more sustainable material.

3. System Boundaries delineate the scope of the LCA study, including the life cycle stages and processes included in the analysis. They may consist of aspects that do not apply to other situations. An example is the ongoing discussion of allocating environmental impacts to recyclable by-products. How much of the environmental impacts should they account for? ISO 14044 recommends three methods for allocating, but the chosen method can significantly impact the result of an LCA and any conclusion we draw.

4. Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) involves compiling data on inputs (e.g., materials, energy) and outputs (e.g., emissions, waste) associated with each life cycle stage of the product or service. The correct inventory has to be identified when judging a specific impact at a particular life cycle stage.

5. A Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) evaluates the potential environmental impacts associated with the life cycle inventory data, considering categories such as climate change, resource depletion, human health, and ecosystems. The general principles and methodological framework of impact categories, midpoints, and damage categories are essential to drawing design conclusions. LCIAs provide different results depending on the region and the community they are in; water consumption has a different impact if it happens in a water-scarce area or an area where plenty of water is still available.

6. Normalization involves comparing environmental impacts to reference values or benchmarks, allowing for relative comparisons between different impact categories. Especially regarding greenhouse gas emissions, we see normalizations like: “This process could save the emissions of hundreds of cars per year.” Normalizations are only helpful if consumers understand them. They can be misleading because they oversimplify issues or because they are based on cultural references a global audience may not be able to relate to.

7. Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) provide transparent and standardized information on products’ environmental performance based on LCA results, enabling the communication of environmental attributes to consumers and stakeholders.

8. Sensitivity Analysis assesses the robustness of LCA results by varying key input parameters or assumptions to understand their influence on the outcomes. LCA results may be misinterpreted and simply wrong if the sensitivity is not understood or not considered.

9. Data Quality and Uncertainty Analysis helps assess the reliability and confidence level of LCA results, providing insights into the robustness of decision-making based on LCA findings.

By understanding these fundamental elements, design engineers can effectively integrate life cycle thinking into their early-stage design processes, identify opportunities for sustainability improvements, and make informed decisions to minimize environmental and social impacts throughout the product’s life cycle.

To follow our ongoing investigation of LCA capabilities, software, and customer uses, subscribe by email to our PLM Green News announcements then follow our PLM Green Global Alliance LinkedIn Group.

In addition to references cited by links in this post, other sources used include:

1. Jolliet, Olivier; Saade-Sbeih, Myriam; Shaked, Shanna; Jolliet, Alexandre; Crettaz, Pierre: Environmental Lice Cycle Assessment; CRC Press; Baco Raton, FL

2. Hauschild, Michael Z.; Rosenbaum, Ralph K.; Olsen, Stig Irving: Life Cycle Assessment: Theory and Practice; Springer; Cham, Switzerland

3. Course Material from Life Cycle and Supply Chain Sustainability Assessment by Gregory Norris, Harvard Extension School