Life Cycle Management

Life cycle assessment is known as 'cradle to the grave' analysis to determine the environmental impact of a product or service throughout its life stages. This encompasses some important considerations. Firstly, what are the inputs used in the productive process and the corresponding output in terms of environmental emission? Secondly, what are the consequences or depletion that results from this output? The paradigm encompassing life cycle assessment (lca) applies to all stages of the product of service and includes optimization to choose the least burdensome outcome for the raw materials used in production, the manufacturing process, the distribution phase, logistical transportation and disposal. Life cycle analysis is carried out in four distinct phases: goal and scope, life cycle inventory, life cycle impact assessment and interpretation.

The goal and scope stage of life cycle assessment includes defining energy and material flows and analyzing the benefit of the product or service. Life cycle assessment is a holistic approach to determining what the benefits are of applying life cycle analysis to the entire process with the ultimate goal to obtain more sustainable development.

The life cycle inventory stage of life cycle assessment is the most intensive resource stage where energy and material inputs and outputs are defined and the environmental impact for all components of the process are quantified for product inception, production and waste disposal. This is where a framework for benchmarking is conceived and used in the next stage of analysis. The life cycle impact assessment stage of lifecycle assessment takes the qualitative evaluation feedback and scope and bounds the quantifiable effects. This systematic process allows for environmental impact assessment and provides the data for which decisions can be made on each respective process to determine how, where and to what degree improvements can be made.

The interpretation stage is where the data analysis of each stage of the life cycle assessment is compared to the original goals and scope to ascertain whether the original objectives can be met. This combines uncertainty and sensitivity analysis. Feedback and independent specialized advice is also sourced and introduced to determine where improvements to the entire process can be made.

The International Organization of Standardization (ISO) has published new guidelines for its life cycle assessment standards to highlight issues and areas of concern in the production and use of products. These new standards draw attention to the adverse environmental impact poor productive processes and inefficient use of resources can have. The aim of these standards is to encourage international adoption of best practice principles that encourage sustainable development. Life cycle assessment is a growing area of awareness that is being adopted by industry and government in response to growing social concern.

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