CAD-Integrated Life Cycle Assessment in Product Development : Evaluation in a Technical Development Context

Sammanfattning: In order to reduce the environmental footprint of products, companies turn to Eco-design and associated tools. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a holistic and quantitative tool that is widely accepted in companies, but it is too extensive to apply in product development; as an alternative, simplified versions are more suitable. By utilising CAD models of components, material data and a database, weight can be calculated and LCA data estimated. This thesis aims to evaluate the feasibility of utilising CAD-integrated LCA software in product development process and explore the barriers in doing so. A case study was conducted to evaluate the software Sustainable Innovation Intelligence by thoroughly describing the tool, the database used as well as the product life cycle management (PLM) system used. Two research questions have been formulated regarding the barriers and to what extent they can be overcome using the new CAD-integrated tool. The first one is answered by a literature review, where 22 barriers were identified and related to different sociotechnical levels, while the second is answered by using pattern matching following the case study. The evaluation covers human and technical aspects of the tool itself, what is required by the practitioner, as well as additional aspects to consider when implementing the tool in a company. The final result shows that 11 of the barriers are to some extent being overcome by the tool. While showing promise, the novelty of the software makes it immature and lacking full functionality, while requiring a lot of the practitioner in terms of LCA specific knowledge.