Integrating Life-Cycle Assessment into Automotive Manufacturing—A Review-Based Framework to Measure the Ecological Performance of Production Technologies

The transition of automotive manufacturing towards sustainability becomes more relevant when new product technologies as lightweight and electric powertrains shift environmental impacts from the use phase to the production phase. Therefore, a systemic assessment and an ecological optimization of novel production processes is necessary before implementation in factories. Furthermore, product design choices pre-determine the environmental performance of production processes. Based on a brief literature analysis of sustainable manufacturing, a framework is developed that integrates production processes with product development processes in an ecological context. The identification of ecologically-relevant core processes represents the basis for the framework development and explains, why the integration of life-cycle considerations in product development processes is decisive. Aim of the framework is to contribute to a holistic understanding of drivers that generate environmental impacts in automotive production. Furthermore, it establishes a life-cycle approach for production, which is crucial to evaluate the ecological relevance of individual resource flows to, within and from the system. The applicability of the framework is critically discussed concerning scope of the assessment, data requirements, functional unit and potential allocations problems.