Information-based Integration of Life Cycle Assessment into IT Landscapes of Manufacturing Companies

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is one of the fundamental methods to facilitate effective decisions in sustainability transformation. However, the current implementation of LCA is inefficient due to detached software applications and manual data imports. Utilizing data from existing information systems offers the potential for a significant increase in efficiency. Existing approaches focus on prototypical implementations with a high level of detail but low transferability, or approaches only consider integration at the system level, whereby practical applicability is reduced. Therefore, this paper presents an information-based framework for integrating LCA software into the existing IT landscape of manufacturing companies with focusing on generic functions and a detailed information flow. The generic approach enables transferability, while the detailed information flows allow practical applicability.