Enabling Mass Customization Life Cycle Assessment in Product Configurators

The chapter discusses the integration of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) into product configurators for mass customization, focusing on the ecological dimension of sustainability. It addresses the challenge of assessing the sustainability of a large number of product variants, particularly for SMEs with limited resources. The work proposes a concept where LCA is performed on individual modules of a product, rather than the entire product, to simplify the assessment process. The chapter outlines the data sources required for LCA, including ERP systems and sustainability databases, and presents a system architecture to enable this integration. The resulting LCA process adheres to international standards while making sustainability assessment feasible for SMEs. The approach is unique in its focus on enabling the assessment of individual product configurations during the configuration process, rather than evaluating the entire stable solution space. The chapter concludes with a discussion on the feasibility and potential limitations of the proposed approach, highlighting the need for further evaluation in real-world environments.