Alexander Kaluza

Life Cycle Evaluation of Factories: The Case of a Car Body Welding Line with Pneumatic Actuators

During the planning phase of the build up or overhaul of factories a large share of the life cycle spanning impact of such production facilities is determined. Furthermore it is very hard to evaluate the impact of possible measures for improvement, resulting Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and environmental impacts of factory systems. Against this background this paper presents an integrated life cycle analysis approach for a streamlined economical and environmental life cycle assessment of factory systems. The approach gets applied while using two interacting tools for a) energy efficiency evaluation of pneumatic systems and b) life cycle evaluation of factory systems.

Integrating Life-Cycle Assessment into Automotive Manufacturing—A Review-Based Framework to Measure the Ecological Performance of Production Technologies

The transition of automotive manufacturing towards sustainability becomes more relevant when new product technologies as lightweight and electric powertrains shift environmental impacts from the use phase to the production phase. Therefore, a systemic assessment and an ecological optimization of novel production processes is necessary before implementation in factories. Furthermore, product design choices pre-determine the environmental performance of production processes. Based on a brief literature analysis of sustainable manufacturing, a framework is developed that integrates production processes with product development processes in an ecological context. The identification of ecologically-relevant core processes represents the basis for the framework development and explains, why the integration of life-cycle considerations in product development processes is decisive. Aim of the framework is to contribute to a holistic understanding of drivers that generate environmental impacts in automotive production. Furthermore, it establishes a life-cycle approach for production, which is crucial to evaluate the ecological relevance of individual resource flows to, within and from the system. The applicability of the framework is critically discussed concerning scope of the assessment, data requirements, functional unit and potential allocations problems.

Assessment of Social Impacts Along the Value Chain of Automation Technology Components Using the LCWE Method

Purpose During the last years, the sustainability of products has gained importance. The established life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology focuses on the evaluation of environmental impacts of products. Academic research extends this approach to social impacts towards establishing a social life cycle assessment (S-LCA). The life cycle working environment (LCWE) method offers one option to include social impacts in LCA. This paper aims at creating a LCWE procedure for company purposes. Automation technology components serve as a case study. Methods LCWE helps to assess the social impact on humans along a products life cycle based on statistical data and the possibility to integrate primary data. The methods focus is on working conditions in upstream and manufacturing activities. LCWE is based on the energy and material flows used in LCA study’s. The results of the method are social profiles of single processes or products. The allocation to social profiles is performed through shares of value-added costs within the life cycle processes of a product. Results and discussion First, a procedure that enables the integration of the LCWE method into companies is presented. Within the procedure, it is possible to integrate corporate data as well as companies aims. The results of the process assessment are categorized by a traffic light function, so that decision makers within the company will be able to integrate the results into their department and improve the processes they are responsible for.