How “Lightweight” LCA Can Give Product Developers Essential Impact Data in Earlier Stages

Research has shown that simplified modeling, underspecification, better visualization can bring transformative advances to Design for Sustainability

Design for Sustainability (DfS) is, deservedly, a hot topic across industrial sectors, as product designers strive to make impact-reducing decisions on materials, manufacturing processes and facilities, energy efficiency, circular end-of-life models, and other sustainability considerations.

Achieving those goals requires clear visibility into environmental impacts early on, as designers explore basic options prior to finalization.

Life cycle assessment (LCA) is an ideal method for providing that type of insight, but there’s a hitch: industry-standard LCA tools are complex and challenging for non-specialists, and they require extensive data about product details, which doesn’t exist in preliminary design phases. This lack of information, along with the fast pace of the design environment, has traditionally constrained designers from modeling and assessment at early stages.

This results in the so-called "eco-design paradox." Although preliminary design phases offer the greatest opportunity for product improvement at the lowest cost, with up to 80 percent of impacts fixed in the concept-creation stage, the inability of LCA tools to handle early-phase uncertainty makes accurate impact assessment impossible at that stage.

Source: Environmental improvement through product development Guide by McAloone, Tim C.; Bey, Niki

How can that paradox be overcome? Fortunately, researchers exploring the problem have identified key functional elements that would enable “lightweight” environmental assessments during early stages of product development.

Among them are:

• A simplified, intuitive process for creating the LCA model of environmental impacts at each lifecycle stage (such as material extraction, manufacturing, use, distribution, and end-of-life).

• Use of generalized material categories, such as “metal” or “plastic,” rather than detailed specifications, to accelerate and streamline the early-stage LCA process. This approach, called underspecification, is fully capable of uncovering areas of concern using techniques like Monte Carlo analysis, which can quickly model hundreds or thousands of scenarios.

• Easy-to-understand presentation of findings, including quantified measures of uncertainty and “one score” metrics, to ensure that decision-makers without formal training in environmental sciences can understand both the results they are viewing and their limitations.

Together, these capabilities would enable product developers to leverage uncertainty and nimbly explore new design options during the early stages of their work — a transformative advance in the pursuit of impact reduction and sustainable design/DfS.

Particularly important is the ability to quickly identify hotspots (processes and activities with the greatest environmental impacts). Clear pointers to these areas, whether in materials, manufacturing, transport, or other lifecycle stages, would allow developers to focus their resources on the most consequential issues, and make the most effective refinements in subsequent phases.

For example, when HP was developing its 3-D printer they assumed energy use would not be an issue since it was based on ink jet print technology, for which energy use is a small contributor. Instead, the energy use in the 3-D process was large, sending the R&D team back to work on it.

With DfS increasingly top-of-mind at thousands of organizations worldwide, existing toolsets must evolve to support product developers in their critically important efforts.