Life Cycle Assessment as a decision- making tool in the automotive industry : Potentials and Limitations, An LCA Case study

Abstract: The requirements of the automotive industry are increasing among customers and society due to environmental issues and global warming. According to the case company, requests from customers and society for verification of the environmental footprint of products are increasing. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a common method for calculating a product's environmental footprint, from raw material extraction to disposal/recycling. However, LCA is a method that has been criticized for being time consuming. Thus, several simplified versions have been presented and tested. The authors have conducted an empirical study to understand the potential and limitations of LCA in a case company in the automobile sector. Semi-constructed interviews have been done in several parts of the case company to acquire knowledge about the production processes and current environmental work to find opportunities and challenges on where to implement the LCA in their development process. Can LCA help the case company in decision-making to reduce the ecological footprint? Findings from previous studies have shown a knowledge gap on where in a product development phase it is the most beneficial to implement the LCA methods. This thesis contributes to reducing the knowledge gap in discussing opportunities and challenges of the LCA method for electronic companies in the automobile industry by investigating having an LCA early, middle, or late in the development process. An LCA will be conducted on a product in the middle development stage at the case company to further strengthen the validity of the conclusions. The study also analyzes the limitations and potential of LCA as a decision-making tool. Moreover, in the end, the thesis summarizes the different LCA processes, and the authors explain what combination of the LCA processes they think is the best choice for the case company. These results can be helpful for other companies in the automobile industry and help them understand how the LCA method can be used in various parts of the development process.