Generic modules based LCA in electronics industry - A case study

Electronic products consist of various materials, need a lot of sophisticated manufacturing processes and are manufactured from many different suppliers. These conditions make environmental assessments even more complicated. The approach of a model based Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) / Life Cycle Engineering (LCE) means managing complex process models from the basis of a background database. Despite of the demanding conditions of electronics industry this offers the opportunity to provide transparent and summarized results with an acceptable time effort. It is realized by forming flexible modules with parameter variation that show already modeled parts and subassemblies which can be chosen from the database. These modules -that can be combined like a tool kit- will be exemplary demonstrated by the LCA of a copier machine. The parameter variation offers the possibility to adapt the modules to the specific product properties and subassembly modifications as far as they are given. Also the interactions within the different life cycle phases can be quickly modeled and analyzed. Even with no detailed material information of single parts and subassemblies the model based approach allows a LCA of the entire product by using those pre-calculated LCA profiles. The case study will present the relation between given information and gained LCA results by using the generic modules based LCA method. This study was partially supported by NEDO/JEMAI and we thank them for the financial support.