Eco-efficiency within Extended Supply Chain as Product Life Cycle Management

Designers make decisions that ultimately impact on both the economic and environmental performance of the products, and many of these costs and impacts occur across the supply chain. This paper proposes an eco-efficiency model for product life cycle management within the extended supply chain (ESC) for food industry. Eco-efficiency (EE) has the potential to incorporate both environmental and economic improvement by companies of ESC, and we explore the use of EE in the design process. It is noteworthy that it is an imperative in the current competitive market that companies must be able to manage their entire production chain taking into account environmental issues as an important factor in their decision-making processes. Therefore, it is believed that EE can integrate and strengthen a company’s functions and assist its decision-making processes as well as implement improvements within its ESC. In this context, it is expected that the proposed model will be able to deliver a validation process based on EE strategies as well as map environmental aspects and its impacts. In addition, the proposed model aims to consider economic aspects along the product ESC and to present elements which can help companies to promote improvements within its supply chain by considering a more environmentally friendly perspective.