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Innovation and Standards


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DEPUIS is supported by the European Commissionunder the Europe INNOVA initiative

‘Main experiences and recommendations from DEPUIS under the Europe INNOVA

Standards networks initiative’

www.europe-innova.org

European CommissionDirectorate-General for Enterprise & Industry

Legal notice

This manual has been produced as part of the Europe INNOVA initiative. The views expressed in this manual, as well as the information included in it, do not necessarily reflect the opinion or position of the European Commission and in no way commits the institution.


The DEPUIS HANDBOOK‘Main experiences and recommendations from DEPUIS under the Europe INNOVA

Standards networks initiative’

A result of the projectDesign of Environmentally friendly Products Using Information Standardsnvironmentally friendly

A Publication supported by the European Commission

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CONTENTS

FOREWORD: STANDARDS NETWORKS 7

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 13

CHAPTER 2: THE CONCEPT OF “LIFE CYCLE THINKING” 17

CHAPTER 3: THE DEPUIS PROJECTMULTIMEDIA HANDBOOK 23

CHAPTER 4: METHODOLOGY OF LIFE CYCLEASSESSMENT LCA 29

CHAPTER 5: OVERVIEW OF STANDARDS 35

5.1 Why We Need Product Data Technology 36

5.2 Standards for Communicating Information 37

5.3 Eco-Design and the Use of InternationalStandards 39

5.3.1 Use of standards throughout the lifecycle of a product 39

5.3.2 Standards for communicating datafor product design and manufactureISO 10303 41

5.3.3 Standards for product classifi cations and dictionaries of terms - ISO 13584 45

5.3.4 Standards for data sharing during the lifeof a process plant - ISO 15926 47

5.3.5 Product data and the semantic web 48

5.3.6 Standards for the communication ofbusiness and commercial information 50

5.4 Standards for Life Cycle Assessment 52

CHAPTER 6: EXAMPLE OF LIFE CYCLE ANALYSIS 61

CHAPTER 7: LESSONS LEARNEDAND FURTHER PERSPECTIVES 71

7.1 If you are... then you should... 71

7.2 The PDT standards and the roleof the outreach and education committeeof ISO TC 184 SC4 73

7.3 The qualifi cation and certifi cationof new skills for eco-design and PDT 75

GLOSSARY 79

REFERENCES 83

LIST OF PARTNERS IN THE DEPUIS PROJECT 84

USEFUL LINKS 85

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ForewordIntroduction

The concept of “Life Cycle Thinking”

The DEPUIS Project Multim

edia HandbookMethodology of Life Cycle Assessm

ent (LCA)

Overview of standardsExam

ple of Life Cycle Analysis

Lessons learned and further perspectives

ForewordSTANDARDS NETWORKS

STANDARDS AND INNOVATION

Standards play a crucial role in the defi nition of market conditions in many industrial sectors and not only in those concerned with high-technology. The use of standards is accelerating technological and organisational change and thus improving innovation performance. Standards are part of the infrastructure that supports effi cient in-novation processes. They play a major role in promoting innovative products and services, by providing stable references for the development of new innovative solutions and creating large scale markets.

As codifi ed information, standards serve to spread knowledge of the requirements for market acceptability and contain explicit technical information reducing uncertainty and search costs for producers and customers. In ad-dition, non-technological standards help shaping new organisational forms and business models and contribute to raising the quality of services and to the effi ciency of business processes.

The mechanism through which standards impact the innovation process is often described as the “path depend-ency of the innovation process”. In short, when specifi cations are defi ned, the options for future technological developments are narrowed down by defi nition, since alternatives are ruled out by a combination of technical and market choice. This may be considered as detrimental to innovation but at the same time innovation requires some kind of predictability and stability so that innovative solutions can more easily fi nd their way.

The merit of developing standards lies in the possibility of reducing the transaction costs involved in the develop-ment and application of (new) technologies and of generating positive network externalities by reaching econo-mies of scale. Standards may, under certain circumstances, also generate negative effects, such as the adoption of sub-optimal technical solutions, the freezing of potential new technological developments or the “stranding” of entire user communities in dead-end products or services. However, innovation does not necessarily favour the “best” technological solutions but those that fi nd strongest support from the market.

There is evidence to suggest that well implemented standards may contribute to the innovation process and therefore to economic growth. The challenge lies in increasing awareness of how standards may be used by economic actors to develop innovative new products and services and more effi cient business processes. Such information must be neutral and unbiased in order to be credible. This offers new business opportunities for infor-mation services that assess the costs and benefi ts of standards in a user-friendly manner thus helping clients to take informed decisions on how to use standards in the most innovative way.

Foreword

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Standards may therefore be considered as a catalyst for innovation. In Europe, large investments are made into the development of standards, offering enterprises potential competitive advantages under the right framework conditions. However, standards in many industrial areas are not suffi ciently known or used by product and service developers. In many areas, more than one standard exists for the same purpose which makes it often diffi cult to decide which the best are.

EUROPE INNOVA AND STANDARDS

To promote the awareness of existing standards and their potential to stimulate innovation, a call for proposals for European projects was launched under the Europe INNOVA initiative in the framework of FP6 with the objective to exchange and compile good practice on how to use standards to develop innovative business solutions, focusing on three key aspects:

1. Facilitating the integration of open standards into the design of new products and servicesEuropean standards are widely acknowledged as one of the measures to enhance intra-EU trade and to foster competitiveness. In this respect, the objective was to demonstrate the possibilities to promote the use of existing standards in the design of new products and services by bringing together designers, product developers and consumer associations to identify and test practical approaches to using standards in an innovative manner.

2. Facilitating the integration of open standards into business processesNon-technological standards play a crucial role for the development of new business practices and services.Examples include, in particular, quality standards and standards defi ning new business workfl ows, such as in the area of e-business. From a public policy perspective, a wider use of standards in these fi elds would help to promote the quality of new business services and to facilitate networking among enterprises, by promoting interoperable business solutions. In this area, the objective was to identify the most promising standards for the development of business practices and services and to develop practical guidance for their implementation at sectoral level.

3. Stimulating innovation through reference to standards in public procurementPublic administrations have a huge impact on the economy in their role of procurers of goods and services. Public tenders and purchases are rather formalized processes, where reference to standards is often made.






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Here, the objective was twofold: on the one hand to assess how standards are currently used and referenced in public procurement processes in the EU and, on the other, to improve the way in which existing standards are referenced in European public procurement processes, with a view to helping bidding companies become more innovative in their product and service design and offer.

EUROPE INNOVA STANDARDS NETWORKS

The Europe INNOVA call for proposals resulted in six European standards networks, fi ve addressing the use of open standards in the design of products, services and business processes from a sectoral perspective and one focusing on public procurement as a lever for stimulating innovation:

BIOHEALTH dealt with security issues related to the use of standards for eHealth interoperability and addressing all concerned parties: those working in healthcare as well as patients and citizens; healthcare insurers, govern-mental bodies and the healthcare industry. It developed relevant information and clear guidelines for eHealth standards users in areas such as identity management, biometrics, ethical applications, etc.

DEPUIS - Design of Environmentally-friendly Products Using Information Standards - aimed at improving the environmentally friendly design of new products and services through the innovative use of new information standards with a view to enabling more companies to use Life Cycle Thinking when assessing the environmental impact of their design of new products.

EUROMIND, in the shipbuilding sector, looked at solutions on how to improve European shipbuilding supply chain collaboration by connecting digital systems via open standards. It identifi ed the most promising open standards and documented their use in horizontal integration (cooperating shipyards) and vertical integration (in the sup-ply chain) in order to address the ever increasing need for cooperation between shipyards, system integrators, equipment manufacturers, electrical engineering companies and other suppliers as well as professional service providers and ship owners.

INNOVAFUN - Applying open standards to INNOVAte FUrNiture business processes - aimed to build industrial consensus on the innovative funStep standard-based solution, facilitating the integration of open standards in the furniture industry. The funStep standard is acknowledged by many SMEs as a catalyst for the innovation in the sector. Although INNOVAFUN targeted the furniture industry, its results can also be used as a reference in other industrial sectors.

STAND-INN, operating in the construction sector, addressed new manufacturing processes based on the IFC standards with the aim of creating new and more effi cient business processes, thus facilitating the construction

Foreword

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sector’s great potential for cost reduction and productivity increase. STAND-INN has brought together the set of open standards to improve information exchange and interoperability in the building lifecycle and it has identifi ed new standards for sustainable development. This, in turn, should help improve the competitiveness of the building and construction industry.

STEPPIN - STandards in European Public Procurement lead to INnovation - explored how referencing open standards in European public procurement processes could foster innovative business solutions amongst bidding companies and sought to encourage the use of new procedures and methods to stimulate innovation through the application of standards in both the public and private sectors.

KEY LESSONS FROM THE EUROPE INNOVA STANDARDS NETWORKS

The experience of the Europe INNOVA standards networks shows that it remains a key challenge to better use standards for the development and commercialisation of new products and services as well as for organisational innovation which requires strong business support. In many cases, new standards are not ready to be used directly by end-users but require further efforts to integrate them into new or better business solutions.

Evidence from the standards networks also suggests that in many sectors, a wide range of standards co-exist and that it is often hard for SMEs and procurers to decide which the best are. As a result, SMEs and public and private procurers are only exceptionally using standards with a view to bring innovative solutions into markets.

In order to address these challenges, the standards networks have developed a number of tools or materials, which are being presented in this series of handbooks, through which neutral information about the benefi ts and costs of using standards with a view to helping SMEs and procurers gain easier access to relevant standards in order that they may better accommodate innovative solutions into often complex environments. These services offer specialised information on which standards matter for what, whom and in which context, and they are seen as particularly strong tools to leverage innovation into new markets. It would be desirable if such new information services would be supported, as much as possible, by the national and European Standardisation Organisations with a view to promoting the wider use of standards.

The results of the Europe INNOVA standards networks are very encouraging. Further efforts will therefore be undertaken to facilitate the innovative use of standards, for example in support of the new Lead Market Initiative of the European Commission. Standards experts are invited to actively participate also in the next generation of Europe INNOVA that will follow a more thematic approach and therefore requires close cooperation with other actors that facilitate innovation processes. Standards can make an important difference.

CHAPTER 1: Introduction


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1. Introduction

DEPUIS which stands for Design of Environmentally friendly Products Using Information Standards is a project funded by the Europe INNOVA network under the 6th Framework Programme of the European Commission(www.europe-innova.org).

All products cause environmental degradation in some way, whether from their manufacturing, use or disposal.The Integrated Product Policy seeks to minimise these effects by looking at all phases of a products’ life cycle (from cradle to grave) and taking action where it is most effective. Life Cycle Thinking is the process in decision making taking into account all resources consumed and all environmental and health impacts that are associated with the life cycle of a product. Life Cycle Thinking is complementary to a number of other assessment techniques such as chemical risk as-sessment with its focus on specifi c substances or environmental management tools with focus on sites or companies.

In fact, the Integrated Product Policy of the European Commission encourages manufacturers to consider the whole life of their products at the earliest decision stages of the innovation process, when making changes is not so costly, in order to reduce the impact on the environment in the future life of the product.

It is well known that SMEs in general very often do not make use of international or national standards, because they are not aware of the benefi ts of using them.

The aim of DEPUIS is to demonstrate the intrinsic benefi t of designing with an integrated approach transversal to all product life cycle phases from the cradle to grave using international standards for product data technology.

The integrated approach, called “Life Cycle Thinking” (LCT), needs a very good product data management among different suppliers using different hardware and software systems. As a consequence DEPUIS promotes the use of standards for Product Data Technology (PDT) as the only means which will allow designers to collect and manage all information necessary for the LCT approach accomplishing, at the same time, the Integrated Product Policy (IPP) of the European Commission.

The DEPUIS project has therefore developed a multimedia handbook with the objective to provide support for:

• manufacturing companies, particularly SMEs, to use these standards for product data technology for commu-nication, quality control and quality assurance of information;

• improving the environmental aspects of new products through the innovative use of new information standards;

• promoting life cycle thinking and the IPP through the distance learning system;

• software developers to produce innovative products and services compatible with the international standards;

• promoting the qualifi cation and recognition of new skills that will enable engineers to make the right choice of software systems for improving the communication and the quality of environmental data throughout the life cycle of a product.

Introduction

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Target audience and contents of this handbookThe knowledge base that has been produced by both of the ISO technical committees in the environmental man-agement series (ISO 14000) and for product data technology (ISO TC184/SC4) is very large.

This handbook is an introduction to encourage more use of the combination of these two methods in order to sup-port innovation in the design of new products and to describe why this interaction is so important.

The target users of this handbook are:

• decision makers who need to introduce requirements, if needed, in future public call tenders;

• SME owners who only need to be aware of the existence and utility of these standards in order to require them when purchasing new software;

• designers who need to design, taking into account the right data coming from different sources which need to be compatible with the standards mentioned;

• software implementers who need to use only few of these standards and need to know them very well in order to implement them in different applications.

This handbook has been conceived as a quick reference for practitioners to access the knowledge compiled in the multimedia handbook. It comprises 6 chapters:

• Chapter 1 summarises the concept of life cycle thinking;

• Chapter 2 introduces the DEPUIS web site as a source of information on standards for LCA and product data technology, with on-line courses for distance learning in both subject;

• Chapter 3 summarises the methodology for life cycle assessment;

• Chapter 4 introduces the concept of product data technology and shows why standardised information models and reference dictionaries that are independent from proprietary software are so important for the whole life approach. This chapter also includes new methods for accessing data from the World Wide Web;

• Chapter 5 summarises a practical example of the life cycle assessment for the roof of a house;

• Chapter 6 summarises the lessons learned and future perspectives.


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IMP3roveCHAPTER 2: The Concept of “Life Cycle Thinking”

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2. The Concept of “Life Cycle Thinking”

The concept of “life cycle thinking” creates possibilities for major improvements in environmental performance and encourages companies to consider the broader picture of the environmental impact of their products or serv-ices. Life cycle thinking also helps to avoid the “shifting of burdens” among life cycle stages, countries, and the various environmental and human health impacts such as climate change, summer smog, acid rain, carcinogenic effects, land use, etc., as well as global material and energy resource depletion.

The life cycle of a product is often long and complicated. It covers all the areas from the extraction of natural resources, through their design, manufacture, assembly, marketing, distribution, sale and use to their eventual disposal as waste. At the same time it also involves many different actors such as designers, industry, marketing people, retailers and consumers. The Integrated Product Policy (IPP) attempts to stimulate each part of these individual phases to improve their environmental performance.

With so many different products and actors there can not be one simple policy measure for everything. Instead there is a whole variety of tools - both voluntary and mandatory - that can be used to achieve this objective.

Figure 1: Whole life factors for manufactured products


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These include measures such as economic instruments, substance bans, voluntary agreements, environmental labelling and product design guidelines.

The IPP seeks to minimise the negative effects on the environment by looking at all phases of a products’ life cycle (from cradle to grave) and taking action where it is most effective.

Figure 1 illustrates the stages in the life of a product and shows the fl ow of information and environmental impacts through its life.

Supply – it may be possible to substitute or minimise the use of materials to reduce the cost and environmental impact of a product. Sourcing supplies locally also reduces distribution costs.

Manufacturing – processes that use fewer materials, energy, water and other resources can reduce the environ-mental impacts and cost of production, and increase effi ciency.

Selling – effi ciency in the transport of products to the selling point can be maximised by careful design, for exam-ple by optimising pallet loads and considering the design of the packaging.

Use – for some products the most damaging stage for the environment is through its use. This stage could be reduced by designing the product for a longer life, by reducing the energy that it uses, by improving the mainte-nance systems, as examples.

End-of-life – to prevent the product, or its packaging, going to landfi ll, consideration needs to be given at the de-sign stage to recyclability, repair, upgrading, or remanufacturing to extend the product’s life.

Correct information throughout the lifetime of a product is exchanged or shared no matter which instrument is used to evaluate the environmental impact of a product. This involves many actors belonging to a supply chain where different hardware/software systems are used.

The ISO 14000 series, and in particular the “environmental management” (ISO 14001 and 14004), “environmental label declarations” (ISO 14020, 14021, 14024, 14025) and ISO 14048 on data format, describe the data necessary to make the evaluation of the environmental impact of the product.

These data are collected during all stages of the product life (see fi g. 1). Thus, Product Data Technology (PDT) is a necessary tool to share data and to allow the design of a product considering in advance the impact of the product on the environment during all the stages of its life cycle.

Like any other standard the PDT standards will only be useful if widely employed. The aim of this handbook is to help the different target audiences identifi ed in the previous chapter to make use of them.






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If the SMEs are supported in using these standards with for example awards, fiscal advantages, financial incentives, they will be able not only to comply with the IPP, but also to improve any other internal process dealing with product data management such as:

• quality assurance

• product liability

• maintenance services

• support services

• reuse

• recycling

• fi nal disposal.

Last, but not least, the SMEs would be able to improve the relationship with their customers or with the supply chain with which they are connected. Not only will the time-to-market decrease drastically but the mistakes due to data re-entry made by operators will disappear.


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IMP3roveCHAPTER 3: The DEPUIS Project Multimedia Handbook

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3. The DEPUIS Project Multimedia Handbook

The EU Project: Design of Environmentally Friendly Products Using Information Standards (DEPUIS) is a response to the Integrated Product Policy (IPP) of the European Commission. The DEPUIS Project has the objectives of enabling more companies to adopt the approach of the IPP and to enable more people to develop the awareness and knowledge to put this approach into practice. The aim is to achieve a synthesis between the use of LCA and the use of product data technology for a life cycle thinking approach.

The main method adopted to achieve these objectives is the creation of a website that has three main sections:

• a multi-media handbook on the standards for product data technology and the standards for LCA which also provides document download, examples of applications and other useful information;

• e-learning courses that provide ba-sic understanding of all the Europe-an legislation related to the control of the environmental impact as well as basic courses for the understand-ing of eco-design, LCA and PDT to offer an opportunity for any com-pany or any individual to increase their knowledge and understanding of the methods for achieving the IPP by the use of product data standards and LCA. Other e-learning courses are more specifi c for designers and standards developers as they de-scribe the PDT standards and LCA tools. The e-learning courses are all free of charge, but a simple registra-tion is necessary;

• video lessons that provide specifi c information about the PDT stand-ards and the ISO TC 184 technical committee for standards and soft-ware developers. All video lessons are free of charge.

Figure 2: The DEPUIS home page


edia Handbook

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Figure 2 illustrates the home page of the DEPUIS website (www.depuis.enea.it). The website is hosted by ENEA – the Italian national research organisation for new technology, energy and the environment. The DEPUIS Project has also held a series of workshops where participants could learn more about these technologies and could meet the tutors for the e-learning courses to discuss the courses and provide feedback for the improvement of the courses and the e-learning experience.

Registration and log-inIt is not necessary to register or to log-in for access to the multi-media handbook. However, registration is required to access the e-learning courses, to meas-ure the amount of use of particular courses and to be ready for the tracking of the courses users in the case a system for certifi cation of skills will be organised. The registration is confi dential and is not revealed to anyone outside ENEA.

Figure 3 illustrates the registration interface that can be accessed by clicking on ‘User Registration’ on the side panel of the home page.

Multi-media handbookThe multi-media handbook is a compilation of information from many sources and it is frequently updated. The main components are:

• A self-evaluation questionnaire to identify requirements for information about materials;

• A searchable database of standards for product data technology and for LCA;

• A searchable database of the e-learning courses, already available and planned;

• Relevant technical documents for download;

• Examples of applications and good practice.

Figure 4 illustrates the user friendly interface of the multimedia handbook.

For copyright reasons only summarised information of the standards can be provided.

Figure 3: The registration interface






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The opening pages of the database of e-learning courses list the titles of all of the courses, either planned or available. A map of the courses is provided by a link at the top of the opening page and a short description of a course can be obtained by selecting the ‘View’ link on the right-hand side. The courses are under development and the titles and contents may change.

e-learning coursesAccess to a course can be obtained via the link ‘Enter the course’ at the bottom of this description page. If the user has already registered, the log-in procedure may have to be repeated to complete the access to the selected course and to enable the monitoring of the use of that course.

Each course is organised into a series of modules. The structure of the course can be revealed by click-ing on the Index button at the top right-hand corner. Individual components of the course structure can be accessed by clicking on the appropriate sub-title in the Index.

Some courses may also have self-assessment sec-tions where a student can check whether the con-tents of a module have been understood.

Figure 5 shows some of the e-learning courses.

Figure 4: The multimedia handbook interface

Figure 5: The interface of the e-learning courses


edia Handbook

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The desired levels of attainment that have been identified for each of the courses in product data technology are:

• Awareness – familiarity with the scope and benefi ts of the technology;

• Knowledge – understanding of the principles and practice of the technology and the details of the scope of the standards;

• Skills – ability to use the technology in the development of engineering software.

The attainment of the Awareness level provides an introduction to everyone and would also be an appropriate level for managers and decision makers.

The attainment of the Knowledge level would be appropriate for design and project engineers, university academ-ics and students, IT managers, environmental consultants etc.

The attainment of the Skills level would be appropriate for software engineers and their managers who want to implement the standards. Most of the courses available are at the levels of Awareness or Knowledge.


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IMP3roveCHAPTER 4: Methodology of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)

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4. Methodology of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)

A life cycle assessment (LCA), also known as: life cycle analysis, ecobalance or cradle-to-grave-analysis, is the investigation and valuation of the environmental impacts of a given product or service caused or necessitated by its existence. It is a variant of an input-output analysis, focusing on physical rather than monetary fl ows1.

The goal of LCA is to compare the full range of environmental damages assignable to products and services and to be able to choose the least burdensome one. The term ‘life cycle’ refers to the notion that a fair, holistic assess-ment requires the assessment of raw material production, manufacture, distribution, use and disposal including all intervening transportation steps necessary or caused by the product’s existence. The sum of all these steps - or phases - is the life cycle of the product. The concept also can be used to optimise the environmental perform-ance of a single product (ecodesign) or to optimise the environmental performance of a company. Common cat-egories of assessed damages are global warming, greenhouse gases, acidifi cation, smog, ozone layer depletion, eutrophication, eco-toxicological and human toxicological pollutants, desertifi cation, land-use, as well as depletion of minerals and fossil fuels.

A classic application of LCA is, for example, to determine whether beverage packaging made of glass is more or less burdensome than plastic bottles. All life cycle phases for both options need to be investigated. For glass bot-tles those phases are the mining of glass minerals from the biosphere, bottle production, bottling of contents, all transports, and fi nal disposal. For plastic bottles they are raw oil production, oil refi ning, polymer production, bot-tle production, bottling of contents, all transports, and fi nal disposal. For all necessary auxiliary materials or serv-ices similar process chains need to be considered: for example, a catalyst needed during the polymer production should be included in its life cycle pro rata. Ecological interventions generated along these complex process chains are inventoried, such as emissions to air, water or soil, resources taken from the biosphere, land uses, or noise generation. These interventions are then interpreted relating to their se-verity and compared for both options to make a fair and holistic judgement. Simultaneously, it is possible to es-tablish which processes in a product’s life cycle are important contributors to damages and gain an understand-ing on the major determinants of en-vironmental performance of the as-sessed products. Figure 6: The interface to the e-learning courses for LCA

1 Methodology for LCA http://lca.jrc.ec.europa.eu/lcainfohub/introduction.vm

Methodology of Life Cycle Assessm

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The DEPUIS web site contains three courses on LCA:

• Life Cycle Assessment basic course;

• LCA data suppliers;

• Life Cycle Assessment tool for Small and Medium sized Enterprises.

Figure 6 shows the interface in the Multi-media Handbook to provide access to the courses.

The procedures of life cycle assessment (LCA) are part of the ISO 14000 environmental management standards: ISO 14040:2006 and 14044:2006. ISO 14044 replaced earlier versions of ISO 14041 to ISO 14043.

According to the ISO 14040 and 14044 standards, a Life Cycle Assessment is carried out in four distinct phases: goal and scope, life cycle inventory, life cycle impact assessment and interpretation.

Goal and ScopeIn the fi rst phase, the LCA-practitioner formulates and specifi es the goal and scope of study in relation to the intended application. The object of study is described in terms of a so-called functional unit. In the example of comparing glass vs. plastic bottles, the functional unit could be “1 litre bottle container for refrigerated juices”. Comparing 1 kg of plastic bottles directly with 1 kg of glass bottles, disregarding the packed volume, would not be an appropriate functional unit for the desired functionality of bottles. Apart from describing the functional unit, the goal and scope should address the overall approach used to establish the system boundaries. The system boundary determines which unit processes are included in the LCA and must refl ect the goal of the study. In re-cent years, two approaches to system delimitation have emerged. These are often referred to as ‘consequential’ modelling and ‘attributional’ modelling. Finally, the goal and scope phase includes a description of the method applied for assessing potential environmental impacts and which impact categories are included.

Life Cycle Inventory (LCI)The second phase, ‘Inventory’, involves the modelling of the product system, data collection, as well as the de-scription and verifi cation of data. This implies that data for inputs and outputs for all affected unit processes that compose the product system are available. The inputs and outputs include inputs of materials, energy, chemicals and ‘other’ - and outputs in the form of air emissions, water emissions or solid waste. Other types of exchanges or interventions such as radiation or land use should also be included.

The data must be related to the functional unit defi ned in the goal and scope defi nition. Data can be presented in tables and some interpretations can be made at this early stage. The results of the inventory is an LCI which provides information about all inputs and outputs in the form of elementary fl ow to and from the environment from all the unit processes involved in the study.






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All these data are usually supplied by different companies using different hardware/software systems. Therefore, the LCA evaluator is obliged to enter the data manually in his own system with loss of time and increased risk of mistakes as a consequence.

The use of PDT standards to collect these data has the following positive results:

• Decreased time for data collection.

• Improved data quality.

• Possibility of tracing the data source.

• Possibility to use actual data from suppliers and not from a generic source on the web, once the product is made.

• Possibility to make an evaluation during the design phase which can be monitored and stored until the end-of-life of the product in order to better manage recycling and disposal.

Life Cycle Impact AssessmentThe third phase ‘Life Cycle Impact Assessment’ is aimed at evaluating the contribution to impact categories such as global warming, acidifi cation, etc. The fi rst step is called characterisation. Here, impact potentials are calcu-lated on the basis of the LCI results. The next steps are normalisation and weighting, but these are both voluntary according the ISO standard. Normalisation provides a basis for comparing different types of environmental impact categories (all impacts get the same unit). Weighting implies assigning a weighting factor to each impact category depending on their relative importance. The problem of applying weighting factors is that they distort the scale of values without adding anything to the overall assessment.

InterpretationThe phase stage ‘interpretation’ is the most important one. An analysis of major contributions, sensitivity analysis and uncertainty analysis leads to the conclusion whether the ambitions from the goal and scope can be met. All conclusions are drafted during this phase. Sometimes an independent critical review is necessary, especially when comparisons are made to the public domain.

Variants of Life Cycle Assessment

Cradle-to-graveCradle-to-grave is the full Life Cycle Assessment from manufacture (‘cradle’) through the use phase and to the disposal phase (‘grave’). For example, trees produce paper which can be recycled into low-energy production

Methodology of Life Cycle Assessm

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cellulose (fi berised paper) insulation, then used as an energy-saving device in the ceiling of a home for 40 years, saving 2,000 times the fossil energy used in its original production. After 40 years the cellulose fi bres are re-placed and the old fi bres are disposed of, possibly by thermo-valorisation. All inputs and outputs are considered for all the phases of the life cycle.

Cradle-to-gateCradle-to-gate is an assessment of a partial product life cycle from manufacture (‘cradle’) to the factory gate, i.e. before it is transported to the consumer. The use phase and disposal phase of the product are usually omitted. Cradle-to-gate assessments are sometimes the basis for environmental product declarations (EPD).

The use of biofuel, instead of fossil fuel during transportation, could have an impact on the fi nal evaluation of LCA.

Cradle-to-CradleCradle-to-cradle is a specifi c kind of cradle-to-grave assessment, where the end-of-life disposal step for the prod-uct is a recycling process. From the recycling process originates new, identical products (e.g. aluminium beverage cans from recycled cans), or different products (e.g. glass wool insulation from collected glass bottles).

Life cycle energy analysisLife cycle energy analysis (LCEA) is an approach in which all energy inputs to a product are accounted for, not only direct energy inputs during manufacture, but also all energy inputs required to produce components, materials and services needed for the manufacturing process. An early expression used for this approach is energy analysis. With LCEA, the total life cycle energy input is established.

Also, in this case it is very important to know the source of energy, whether from fossil fuels or from renewable energies, as this makes a big difference. Therefore the LCEA cannot be independent of the specifi c supplier of the product and could be very different for the same product of the same multinational company depending on the supplier’s localisation.

Energy productionIt is recognised that much energy is lost in the production of energy commodities themselves, such as nuclear energy, photovoltaic electricity or high-quality petroleum products. Net energy content is the energy content of the product minus the energy input used during extraction and conversion, either directly or indirectly.


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IMP3roveCHAPTER 5: Overview of Standards

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5. Overview of Standards

In a globalised world it is necessary to use international standards in order to ensure the correct interpretation of data throughout a network of suppliers and users that could be anywhere in the world. The International Organi-zation for Standardization (ISO) has set up different technical committees for the different subjects of science and technology with international experts. The outputs are several hundreds of standards used by more than 140 countries in the world. These standards provide a body of knowledge developed by the global engineering com-munity.

In this chapter some of the standards for product data management and environmental data management are described briefl y and references to the DEPUIS multimedia handbook are made in order to provide more informa-tion about them.

The standards mentioned are produced by the following ISO technical committees, each comprising more than 100 experts:

• ISO TC 184/SC4 Industrial automation systems and integration, SC 4, Industrial data;

• ISO TC 207 Environmental management.

This chapter is of interest mostly to engineers and software developers, although it is important to em-phasise that the advantages of using standardised data models are also very important to the following groups:

• decision makers who are interested in production costs, and the costs of maintaining different software sys-tems and of the training necessary to learn new systems;

• designers who wish to move data effi ciently from one system to another, without mistakes and without loss of information.

Stable international standards enable software developers to satisfy different customers with less effort.

Stable international standards enable SMEs to receive data from different suppliers and to send data to different customers.

Overview of standards

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5.1 Why We Need Product Data Technology

The production and management of product information is every company’s second business.

Whereas most attention is paid to the management of the physical product throughout the lifetime it is important to realise that also the information that accompanies the product through its life is crucial. It is well understood that the inputs and outputs of physical products have to be managed by strict adherence to engineering specifi ca-tions, otherwise there will be additional costs arising as a result of returns, rework, negotiations, etc. The same is true of product information. Inputs and outputs of technical information in the form of data associated with the product and its manufacturing processes also have to be managed by the equivalent of engineering specifi cations; otherwise costs will be incurred from the same causes as with the hardware.

International standards for product data representation are the equivalent engineering specifi cations that provide a neutral mechanism for describing product data throughout the life cycle of a product and which are independ-ent of any particular software system. The nature of this description makes it suitable for neutral fi le exchange between different computer systems, but also as a basis for implementing and sharing product databases and long-term archiving.

The development and implementation of these product data standards is called product data technology (PDT) and their use as specifi cations to manage the information fl ows in the life cycle of a product is called information engineering. Just as with standards that are engineering specifi cations for hardware, these product data stand-ards can be used as the basis for quality control and quality assurance of product data and thus ensure its validity and reliability.

The use of product data technology standards for the whole-life approach is particularly important for the end-of-life scenarios. The lifetime of most products, particularly complex products, is longer than the lifetime of the computer systems that were used to design them and control their manufacture.

At the end of the life of a product, the data describing the product will need to be:

• processed in unknown systems;

• in unknown locations.

It is clear that this information should accompany the product throughout its life, and the information will require a standardised specifi cation that ensures that it can still be processed whenever and wherever needed. A specifi -cation for information is an information model – a formal description of types of ideas, facts and processes which together form a model of a portion of the real world and which provides an explicit set of rules for the interpreta-






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tion of the description. If an information model is written in a computer sensible language such as EXPRESS, it has the additional quality of being computer processable. A computer-processable dictionary will defi ne the terms that identify the data items.

In order to communicate information without misunderstanding, everyone in the communication chain must use the same information model and the same dictionary. This is the fundamental basis of product data technology.

5.2 Standards for Communicating Information

Every computer software system is unique in its internal organisation of its data and also in the identifi cations that are assigned to the data items – the software data model. Direct transfer of the data from one system to a different software system will fail because the receiving system will try to interpret the transferred data according to its own internal data model which is a different model.

For instance, the string of symbols AISI 304 L can be interpreted by engineers to mean a stainless with a particular proportion of additives to iron and it will still have the same meaning if written in the following ways: AISI_304_L, AISI/304L, AISI-304-L. However, a computer would interpret these initials as different products and will be un-able to read and process the attached value in the correct manner. In reality, however, materials are much more complex than just initials and a property value. If misinterpreted due to different measurement units, this could cause disasters in the real world.

Conversion from one software pro-gramme to another in order to achieve the correct interpretation of data may be possible, but it is not the best solu-tion. The use of data produced by one software system by a different software system requires the conversion from one data model to the other. However, for many-to-many direct communica-tions between n different data models there would need to be n(n-1) separate data conversion interfaces so that each software system would be able to inter-pret between any of the different models of the data that it could receive.

Suppliersystem

Customersystem

Point-to-pointtranslators

Satellite systems StandardisedInformation model

CA 1

Suppliersystems

Customersystem

Suppliersystem

Customersystem

CA 1 CA 1CA 1

CA 2 CA 2 CA 2CA 2CA 4 CA 4CA 4

CA 3 CA 3 CA 3CA 3

Figure 7: Alternative scenarios for the exchange of product data


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The standards for product data technology provide information models for particular application domains that are independent from proprietary software. The benefi ts are that each software system needs to have only one conver-sion interface, between its own internal structure and the independent model, to be able to output data or to use the information that is specifi ed in a received model. Alternative strategies for the communication of information between different computer software systems are shown in Figure 7 and illustrate the alternative situations of a supplier with multiple customers (one-to-many and many-to-one), each with different software systems.

Product data technology has been developed by the Sub-committee 4: Industrial data (SC4), of the ISO Technical Committee 184: Industrial automation systems and integration (TC184). ISO TC184/SC4 has developed the system of standards for the computerised representation of product and process data through the combined efforts of hundreds of engineers from the world’s main industrialised nations.

The main standards of product data technology that are important for the whole life approach are:

• ISO 10303 Product data representation and exchange – the basis of the technology with generic information models and applications that satisfy particular industrial requirements (collectively known as STEP):

• ISO 13584 Parts libraries – information model for dictionaries of terms that can be referenced from ISO 10303 (collectively known as PLib);

• ISO 15926 Integration of life-cycle data for process plants including oil and gas production facilities – a refer-ence data library that defi nes the terminology for products that are used in chemical process plant and off-shore oil and gas construction projects (collectively known as RDL).

• IFC (Industry Foundation Classes); which is used by the building and construction industries

Most of the relevant standards were developed before the Web became a crucial part of everyday business activi-ties. These standards are now being upgraded to take advantage of Web technologies, such as RDF and OWL.

All of these standards are written in the special computer language called EXPRESS, which is designed for the construction of information models that are unambiguous representations of real world situations. Information models written in EXPRESS are computer processable and can be interfaced to existing engineering systems.

NOTE: Although these information models have been developed by engineers for industrial applications, their implementation in engineering software is in the domain of software engineering and these standards are NOT intended for human-to-human communication. They are summarised briefl y below in order to reveal the scope of some of these standards and their potential applications. More information can be found in the multimedia handbook in the DEPUIS web site.






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5.3 Eco-Design and the Use of International Standards

5.3.1 Use of standards throughout the life cycle of a product

In this section we provide just a “fl avour” of the amount of data necessary to perform eco-design, and describe the standards which could be used to collect, exchange and archive these data. Normally, the following phases of a product life cycle produce data which need to be collected from different enterprises using different systems:

• the supply of “raw materials” including energy, and the other resources needed to extract, transport process or generate;

• the manufacture of components that are assembled in the fi nal product – which can be anything from a book or a cruise ship. The information about all the inputs and outputs to the manufacturing processes needs to be known;

• the selling phase which includes the packaging and the transport. Both of these depend on the location of pro-ducer and customer;

• the use phase which requires energy (renewable or not), and may produce polluting waste. The use may include the maintenance of the product necessary to extend its life;

• the recycling phase which includes separating the product into different recyclable materials or, in the best case, reconditioning and reusing entire assemblies;

• the disposal phase of any materials which are produced by the recycling activity, but which are not usable.

The fi gure 8 shows some of the standards which could be used to collect information relevant to these life cycle stages in such a way that information can be transferred from one stage to another and which can be collected and used to improve the design from the environmental point of view (Life Cycle Thinking).

To sum up, figure 8 suggests the use of the following standards for the different stages of a product’s life:

• ISO 13584 and ISO 15926 can be used in the supply chain to describe components, their properties and other information needed for life cycle design. Web technologies can be used to publish all this information on the Web – either freely available or restricted to customers.


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• ISO 10303 Application Protocols (APs) provide data models to support information exchanges for particular industry sectors. The EU funded CASCADE and DEPUIS project have shown that it is possible to include envi-ronmental impact information based on the ISO 14000 standards within these data models. Such information is provided by the EU LCA Infohub.

• UBL and ebXML, which are becoming the preferred standards for e-business among SMEs, can be used during the selling stage for the business transaction, and can be enriched with information related to environmental impact by the integrated use of Web technologies such as OWL and the EU LCA Infohub.

Figure 8: The life cycle of a product and the standards which could be used






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• ISO 10303-239 and ISO 15926 can both be used for the life cycle support of products. AP 239 has been devel-oped by the “defence” industry, and is suitable for use where fl eets of similar manufactured products need to be maintained. ISO 15926 has been developed by the oil and gas industries and is suitable for use where data about a single product needs to be maintained from design, through use and maintenance to recycling and disposal.

• ISO 10303-235 can be used both for certifi cation purposes, if needed, and to collect all the information related to the materials used in a product in order to facilitate the management of the recycling of the product.

• ISO 15956 and ISO 13584 can be used again to facilitate the management of components which could be reused in other products.

• All the information during the life cycle of the product could be stored with ISO 10303 technology to be read by unknown hardware/software systems used in the future or for a better design or even to know what has been disposed in a waste management site.

• ISO 14000 series is used as a “backbone” whenever environmental management needs to be considered.

The following paragraphs provide a better explanation of the role of different standards.

5.3.2 Standards for communicating data for product design and manufacture ISO 10303

ISO 10303: Product data representation and exchange is a very large collection of standard documents that provide the base technology for methods for the representation of product data and specify many of its applications2.

The collection of documents is divided into groups summarised below:

• description methods of which the most important is the EXPRESS language used in all the standards;

• methods used to implement the standards;

• Integrated Generic Resources that are the fundamental basis from which all the applications of ISO 10303 are developed. They describe, through EXPRESS fi les and EXPRESS G diagrams, the basic information structure to describe any product and can be “assembled” in different ways to meet the requirements of different business sectors.

2 Titles of parts of ISO 10303 http:://www.tc184-sc4.org/titles/STEP¬titles.htm


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The engineering scope of the Integrated Resources is summarised as:

• Fundamentals of product description and support;

• Geometric and topological representation;

• Representation structures;

• Product structure confi guration;

• Material and other engineering properties;

• Visual presentation;

• Shape variation tolerances;

• Process structure and properties;

• Mathematical constructs;

• Mathematical description;

• Classifi cation and set theory;

• Procedural and hybrid representation;

• State;

• Risk;

• Quality of product shape data.

Some “assembled integrated resources” have already been defi ned by business sectors. These parts, going from 200 and upwards, are the Application Protocols of ISO 10303 that are implemented in engineering software for industrial use. Each Application Protocol is an extension of the single model in the Integrated Generic Resources that has been specialised for a particular industrial need.

For the whole-life approach, a selection of probably the most relevant applications is:

• ISO 10303-203: Confi guration of 3D designs of mechanical parts and assemblies;

• ISO 10303-210: Electronic assembly, interconnection and packaging design;

• ISO 10303-214: Core data for automobile design processes;

• ISO 10303-235: Engineering properties for product design and verifi cation;

• ISO 10303-239: Product life cycle support.






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Figure 9 shows the Minimum Data Set (MDS) used to describe the standards in the DEPUIS website. Each MDS describes the business sec-tors in which it can be used, the purpose of the standards, the objectives and the user of it. In some cases, if available, it is possible to down-load technical documents for a better compre-hension and a link to the web site of the commu-nity which has developed the standard, if any. For example, the defence industry has developed the standard for the “life cycle support”, ISO 10303 AP 239, and there is a very well documented website where very useful information can be found. The oil and gas community, on the other hand, has developed a website for the Reference Data Library (RDL) where is even possible to download and upload product data. This website has been used to upload all defi nitions from the ISO 14000 series.

ISO 10303-203: Confi guration of 3D designs of mechanical parts and assembliesThis application of ISO 10303 provides the means of communication between different CAD systems. It is widely used in the automobile and aerospace industries and is implemented in most commercial CAD systems. The stand-ard provides standardised structure for business information, part information, assembly structures, product con-fi guration, 3D models of products, product properties, product specifi cations for highly variant products, product breakdown, structure of composite material products and construction history. ISO 10303-203 is very important for defi ning the product information when making decisions for the end-of-life strategy. A recorded video lesson by one of the DEPUIS partners provides more detailed information on this standard. This standard is also used in other standards such as ISO 10303-214 developed for the automotive industry.

ISO 10303-210: Electronic assembly, interconnection and core designThis standard is important for defi ning the technical details of electronic products that are subject to Directives 2002/95/EC on the restriction of the use of certain hazardous substances in electrical and electronic equipment and 2002/96/EC on waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE Directive).

Figure 9: The Minimum Data Set (MDS) used to describe standards on the DEPUIS website


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ISO 10303-214: Core data for automobile design processesISO 10303-214 is widely used in the German automotive industry. The information model is applicable to describing the assembly of any product, not only automobiles. Therefore the resources of this standard will be very valuable for specifying the details of complex products for dismantling and disposal at their end-of life.

ISO 10303-235: Engineering properties for product design and verifi cationThe information model for ISO 10303-235 is suffi ciently universal that it provides a specifi cation for any property measured by any method. The names and defi nitions of measurement methods and their associated properties for a particular domain would be defi ned in dictionaries that conform to ISO 13584 (see below) and that can be accessed by implementations of ISO 10303-235.

ISO 10303-235 would specify the computerised representation of environmental data and the detailed properties of components and so would support a supply chain for the provision of LCI data.

ISO 10303-239: Product life cycle support (PLCS)ISO 10303-239 provides the capability to support all of the information required to design maintenance solutions for a product throughout its life, to track planned and unplanned maintenance based on the actual state of the product and the changing state of the product as components are replaced and re-paired. PLCS can also be used to associate technical document and training materials with various valid product confi gurations. PLCS could be used as the basis for specifying end-of-life strategies for the dis-mantling and disposal of a complex product.

In all of these cases, the data specifi ed by these standards can accompany a product throughout its life cycle be-cause the specifi cation of the information is independent from proprietary software.

A deeper description of each standards and the utility of their usage can be found in the multimedia handbook of the DEPUIS web page. In fi gure 10 the graphic interface of the data base with the main PDT standards description is shown.

Figure 10: The interface of the data base for PDT standards

Tip:In the DEPUIS website there are both e-learning courses as well as video lessons, freely available for anyone interested in learning how any

engineering property can be represented with the ISO standards developed by ISO TC 184.

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5.3.3 Standards for product classifications and dictionaries of termsISO 13584

ISO 13584: Parts libraries, specifi es an information model for collections of products, or processes, and their associated properties. The importance of this model is that it has proved to be very valuable for the compila-tion of dictionaries of terms that can be accessed by refer-ence from the application models of ISO 10303. A particular benefi t of having a single information model for the dictionary is that dictionaries from intersecting domains conforming to the same model can be combined by making reference from one to the other and can be applied across a very wide range of product classes, from mechanical to electronic parts. The collection of information in an application of ISO 13584 could be called an ontology – a representation of concepts and their relationships within a domain of knowledge.

Product or process classesAn application of ISO 13584 starts with an ordering of the products or processes in terms of their properties. The result is a classifi cation and the components of the ordering are identifi ed as classes. The ordering is intended to be simple and classes should not be classifi ed into more than two or three classifi cation levels. Classes of products or processes may be grouped into sub-classes of a super-class when the classes possess common properties that can be assigned to the super-class.

ISO 13584-42: Methodology for structuring parts families describes:

• rules to group parts into generic families of parts and simple families of parts;

• rules for the choice of the appropriate properties that shall be associated with the families of parts;

• the attributes that shall be provided by library suppliers to describe the families and properties of parts;

• the specifi cation of those attributes in the EXPRESS information model that provide for the exchange of infor-mation of each dictionary data.

Each class in an application of ISO 13584 is identifi ed by an alphanumeric code, called a Basic Semantic Unit (BSU). The value of a BSU is the identifi er of the record of information about the class. The other information associated with a class is: name, short name, defi nition, up to two alias names, version number, revision number, source of the

Tip:The integration of the existing parts libraries with infor-mation related to environ-mental impact could enable eco-designers to choose the

best product parts for the manufacturing of environmentally friendly products.

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defi nition, the list of properties that are associated with the class, the super class and any sub-classes. A diagram may be included to support the defi nition. The dates of the original entry, the current version and the current revision should also be recorded.

Properties of classesProperties are identifi ed as ‘visible’ properties that may be applied anywhere in a named scope of the classifi ca-tion, and ‘applicable’ properties that are selected from the visible properties to be associated with a particular class. The advantage of this approach is that properties can be defi ned once within the name scope and then applied to several classes, wherever they are appropriate. Each property is also assigned a BSU. The other infor-mation associated to a property are: name, short name, defi nition, symbol, units of the measure, up to two alias names, up to two synonymous symbols, version number, revision number and source of defi nition. A diagram may be included to support the defi nition. The dates of the original entry, the current version and the current revision should also be recorded. A property of a class may be dependent on another property and this dependency may be specifi ed by a mathematical expression.

The whole collection of information (library) is identifi ed with a code for the identity of the owner of the library. The unique identity of an entry in the library is then an assembly of the identity of the owner and the BSU of the entry. ISO 13854-26 defi nes the content and the format of the identifi er for the library.

Applications of ISO 13584Applications of ISO 13584 are made easier by the availability of free software that implements the information model and provides a simple user-interface for the input of data. The software is called PLIB Editor and it is sup-plied by the University of Poitiers3. This software was used with great success for ISO 13399 Cutting tool data representation and exchange. ISO 13399 consists of an information model, using the technology of ISO 10303 which describes the assembly of a modern cutting tool, and a dictionary, which conforms to ISO 13584, for the terminology of the parts of cutting tools and their properties. Parts of a cutting tool require screws, nuts and bolts to hold the assembly together and some of these items are unique to the cutting tool industry. However, some of them are standard items. ISO 13584-511: Fasteners is a dictionary of bolts, screws, nuts and washers that are defi ned in ISO Standards.

The ISO 13399 dictionary for cutting tools, for instance, has used ISO 13584 to specify the information model that is used for the eCl@ass4 assembly of product defi nitions.

For more information on ISO 13584, a video lesson has been recorded on the DEPUIS website.

3 PLIB Portal http://www.plib.ensma.fr

4 http://www.eclass.de






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5.3.4 Standards for data sharing during the life of a process plant — ISO 15926

ISO 15926: Integration of life cycle data for process plants including oil and gas facilities has been devel-oped to overcome proprietary and system dependent data defi nitions that prohibit the effective exchange, sharing and integration of information, particularly, but not exclusively, for process plants. The standard is equally valid for any complex assembly that changes continually as a result of maintenance and refurbish-ment during its life.

ISO 15926 is generic and defi nes a methodology for the general handling of information data. It consists of several parts. Part 2 is the data model that defi nes the rules and the schema and Part 4 contains the Ref-erence Data Library (RDL). The RDL defi nes the semantic meaning of the terms used in a specifi c industry. An integrated information platform across disciplines can be established by extending the RDL of ISO 15926. Part 7 specifi es implementation methods consisting of templates and facades.

ISO 15926 Integration of life cycle data for process plants including oil and gas production facilities consists of the following seven parts. (For more information refer to the DEPUIS web site):

• Part 1 Overview and fundamental principles;

• Part 2 Data model;

• Part 3 Ontology for geometry and topology;

• Part 4 Initial reference data;

• Part 5 Procedures for registration and maintenance of reference data;

• Part 6 Methodology for the development and validation of reference data;

• Part 7 Implementation methods for the integration of distributed systems.

ISO 15926 has been used to collect all the defi nitions used in ISO 14000 standards and can be enriched with any other information useful to eco-designers.

Video lessons describing these standards are recorded and freely available on the DEPUIS website. Figure 11 shows the video lesson interface where it is possible to listen to the lecture and see the slides at the same time.

Figure 11: The interface of the video lesson for ISO15926


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5.3.5 Product data and the semantic web

Today the Web is part of everyday business activities, and this is unlikely to change. The Web is as stable and per-sistent as any other part of our information infrastructure.

Although the Web is ubiquitous, it is useful to restate its architecture which has two foundations:

• things are identified by URIs

A URI (Uniform Resource Identifi er) is an identifi er which is used on the Internet to identify a resource(the Internet jargon for “thing”).

A thing can be anything:

• a fi le of data, e.g. an HTML document;

• an abstract concept, e.g. a centrifugal pump;

• a fi ctional animal, e.g. Babar the Elephant;

• a concrete object, e.g. the Eiffel Tower.

Anybody can assign a URI to anything. For example, CAESAR Systems Limited can assign the URI http://www.caesarsystems.co.uk/fi ctitious_animals/Babar to Babar the Elephant. If you regard CAESAR Systems Limited as an appropriate identifi cation authority for fi ctitious animals (unwise) then you may use this URI. You need to look at the fi rst part of the URI – the namespace – and decide whether or not the controller of the namespace is trustworthy for the purpose.

• access to URIs using HTTP

Most URIs begin with “http://”. This implies that they can be dereferenced (the Internet jargon for “accessed”) using HTTP (the standard web access mechanism used by web browsers).

Sometimes dereferencing obtains merely “HTTP error 404” (the Internet jargon for “nothing”). This is allowed, but not helpful. More usefully, dereferencing downloads of a computer fi le, which is a representation of the thing identifi ed by the URI.

What the representation is, is not specifi ed. Often it is a computer interpretable document which describes the identifi ed thing – perhaps a fi le in a standard format such as .html, .pdf, .gif, or .wmv. This document may refer to other objects using their URIs – thereby creating a Web.






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Usually, dereferencing does not obtain the thing itself. Babar the Elephant cannot be downloaded from the Web because it is a fi ctitious animal. The Eiffel Tower cannot be downloaded because it is 2000 tonnes of steel.

In the special case where a URI identifi es a document, dereferencing can (but need not) download the document itself, rather than merely a representation. Sometimes you still get a representation - perhaps one which says “if you want this document, you will have to buy it – enter your credit card number here”.

The Web is a useful business tool only if:

• a URIs always identifi es the same thing, and

• dereferencing always gives information about that thing.

This is stated clearly in Tim Berners-Lee’s document “Cool URIs don’t change” (http://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI).

The impact of the Web architecture on product data is fundamental. Each individual product can be identifi ed by a URI. The URI can be stamped underneath the product (so that it can be found with the help of a torch and an oily rag), or held on a RFID tag so that it can be read when required.

The supplier of the product should en-sure that dereferencing the URI always provides information about the prod-uct. The data should be maintained on the web for the entire life of the product and for an appropriate period afterwards. This information should be a combination of person readable doc-uments, and computer interpretable product data.

Product data is no longer a fi le which is sent as an e-mail attachment, but data which is published on the Web. (Data published on the Web is not necessar-ily publicly available, but can be pro-tected by passwords or other access controls).Figure 12: The e-learning course on engineering analysis and the semantic web


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The DEPUIS website provides a free e-learning course on engineering analysis and semantic web. Figure 12 shows the interface of the DEPUIS e-learning course.

In conclusion, nowadays there is the opportunity for any supplier to maintain information related to any single product in order to facilitate maintenance, support services, dismounting for recycling of some parts or infor-mation on the fi nal disposal. The information can be protected whereby only the owner can access it whenever needed. More detailed information on the use of the web on product data standards is available on the DEPUIS website.

5.3.6 Standards for the communication of business and commercial information

UBL and ebXML Universal Business Language5 (UBL) is intended to support and to encourage an incremental transition from pa-per-based trade to electronic trade. UBL has been ratifi ed as a standard by the OASIS group.

The aim of UBL is to provide a standard, royalty-free library of XML-based, electronic business documents. The vi-sion is to create a vocabulary for the large bulk of information that is fairly regular among companies, and also to create mechanisms to extend and to customise vocabularies for use in specifi c contexts (such as industry groups, languages, or national jurisdictions).

UBL is designed to plug directly into existing business, legal, auditing and records management practices, thus eliminating the re-keying of data in existing fax- and paper-based supply chains and providing an entry point into electronic commerce for small and medium-sized businesses. The users are likely to be software engineers and those responsible for the integration of business services.

The benefits and advantages of a standard XML format will be:

• reduced cost of integration, both among and within enterprises, through the reuse of a common code for processing standard data structures;

• lower cost of commercial software (much lower than generic XML software);

• easier learning curve (just a single library);

5 http://docs.oasis-open.org/ubl/os-UBL-2.0/UBL-2.0.html






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• lower skill level required for everyday processing tasks (one-line scripts using regular expressions can often replace real programs);

• standardised training, many skilled workers, universally available pool of system integrators;

• reduced cost of entry and therefore quicker adoption by small and medium-sized enterprises.

ISO/TS 15000: Electronic business using eXtensible Mark-up Language6 (ebXML), has been developed by OASIS7 to enable a global electronic market. The core objectives of ebXML are to build a collection of XML-based standards that reduce the expense associated with reliable electronic interchange for small and medium-sized business.

The benefits of ebXML are:

• machine readable representation of the collaborative processes among different organisations as process de-scription (ebBP), company collaboration profi le (CPP) and collaboration agreement (CPA) as a basis for setting up concrete implementation of an inter-organisational e-collaboration;

• specifi cations related to message transport (ebMS), repositories and Core Component Types to model eBusi-ness documents.

ebXML could be implemented to ex-change information related to the envi-ronmental impact of components pro-duced in a supply chain and that need to be collected by the fi nal seller inter-ested in selling eco-labelled products.

Two e-learning courses, freely available, have been developed for the DEPUIS project. Figure 13 shows the interface of one of these courses.

Figure 13: The interface of the e-learning course for ebXML

6 http://www.ebxml.org

7 http://www.oasis-open.org


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5.4 Standards for Life Cycle Assessment

There are a series of International Standards for life cycle assessment. Together they constitute a store of knowl-edge and experience for newcomers and professional advisors alike. The standards are also reviewed periodically to refl ect changes in the understanding and experience. The most recent versions of the standard should be the ones that are consulted. The date of the standard follows the identifying number.

International Standards are identifi ed by the characters: ‘ISO’ before the identifying number and the document has been approved following an extensive international consulta-tion process. There are other levels of stand-ard documents that have not been subject to the same consultation and review process but are the result of a consensus reached among experts in the subject. These documents are identifi ed as Technical Specifi cations (ISO/TS) and Technical Reports (ISO/TR).

In the multimedia handbook of the DEPUIS website a searchable data base allows the main characteristics of each ISO 14000 stand-ards to be viewed. Figure 14 shows the visual interface of the database.

ISO 14001:2004 Environmental management – Life cycle assessment – Principles and frameworkObjectives: To bring environmental issues and their management into the operational activities of an enterprise.

Summary: ISO 14001:2004 specifi es requirements for an environmental management system to enable an or-ganisation to develop and implement a policy and objectives which take into account legal requirements and other requirements to which the organisation subscribes together with information about signifi cant environmental aspects. It applies to those environmental aspects which the organisation identifi es as those which it can control and those which it can infl uence. It does not itself state specifi c environmental performance criteria.

Figure 14: The interface of the database for ISO 14000






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ISO 14001:2004 is applicable to any organisation that wishes to establish, implement, maintain and improve an environmental management system, to assure itself of conformity with its stated environmental policy, and to demonstrate conformity with ISO 14001:2004 by a) making a self-determination and self-declaration, or b) seeking confi rmation of its conformance by parties having an interest in the organisation, such as customers, or c) seeking confi rmation of its self-declaration by a party external to the organisation, or d) seeking certifi cation/registration of its environmental management system by an external organisation.

All the requirements in ISO 14001:2004 are intended to be incorporated into any environmental management system (EMS). The extent of the application will depend on factors such as the environmental policy of the organi-zation, the nature of its activities, products and services and the location where and the conditions in which it functions. ISO 14001:2004 also provides, in Annex A, informative guidance on its use.

Benefits: The goal of an Environmental Management System (EMS) is to continuously improve the environmental performance of the organisation with a step-by-step approach. The EMS identifi es responsibilities, procedures and methods. An EMS can often identify opportunities to reduce the amounts of energy, materials and waste and to reduce costs as well.

The implementation of an EMS can often result in a more effi -cient production process. Recording competencies, responsibili-ties and transparent procedures reduce confusion and disagree-ments, and ensure that the business runs smoothly. By making environmental protection a high priority in your day-to-day operations, it can reinforce the staff’s commitment to the busi-ness. A certifi ed EMS demonstrates that a company operates proactively. This positive image will contribute to its success in the long run.

ISO 14004:2004 Environmental management systems — General guidelines on prin-ciples, systems and support techniquesObjectives: To bring environmental issues and their management into the operational activities of an enterprise.

Summary: ISO 14004:2004 provides guidance on the establishment, implementation, maintenance and improve-ment of an environmental management system and its coordination with other management systems. The guide-lines in ISO 14004:2004 are applicable to any organisation, regardless of its size, type, location or level of ma-turity. While the guidelines in ISO 14004:2004 are consistent with ISO 14001:2004 environmental management system model, they are not intended to provide interpretations of the requirements of ISO 14001:2004.

Tip:A certifi ed EMS can offer a competitive edge. Purchasing departments, particularly in large companies, are asking more and more for evidence

of an environmental management system.The systematic EMS can help to identifyand reduce safety and liability risks.

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ISO 14020:2000 Environmental labels and declarations – General principlesObjectives: Stimulating the demand for products and services with lower environmental burdens by providing relevant information on their life cycle to address the purchaser’s demands on environmental information.

Summary: ISO 14020:2000 establishes guiding principles for the development and use of envi-ronmental labels and declarations. It is intended that other applicable standards in the ISO 14020 series shall be used in conjunction with this In-ternational Standard. This International Stand-ard is not intended for use as a specifi cation for certifi cation and registration purposes.

ENEA has produced an e-learning course based on the ISO 14020 standards necessary for eco-design. Figure 15 shows the interface of the e-learning course in Italian – an English transla-tion is being developed.

ISO 14021:1999 Environmental labels and declarations — Self-declared environmen-tal claims (Type II environmental labelling)Objectives: Stimulating the demand for products and services with lower environmental burdens by providing relevant information on their life cycle to address the purchaser’s demands on environmental information.

Summary: ISO 14021 is an international standard defi ning the overall characteristics that product self-declara-tions should fulfi l. This standard provides guidance on how to use 12 specifi c claims (including the use of the terms; ‘compostable’, ‘degradable’, ‘designed for disassembly’, ‘extended life product’, ‘recovered energy’, ‘recyclable’, ‘recycled content’, ‘pre-consumer material’, ‘post-consumer material’, ‘recycled material’, ‘recovered [reclaimed] material’, ‘reduced energy consumption’, ‘reduced resource use’, ‘reduced water consumption’, ‘reusable’, ‘refi ll-able’, ‘waste reduction’) and considerations on the use of the Möbius loop.

This type of eco-label is developed by manufacturers, distributors, etc. in order to communicate information on the environmental aspects of their products or services. There is no certifi cation by a third party, but the informa-tion given should be verifi able, accurate and relevant in order to maintain credibility by consumers.

Figure 15: The interface of the e-learning course on ISO 14020






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ISO 14024:1999 Environmental labels and declarations — Type I environmentallabelling — Principles and proceduresObjectives: Stimulating the demand for products and services with lower environmental burdens by providing relevant information on their life cycle to address the purchaser’s demands for environmental information.

Summary: ISO 14024 is an international standard defi ning the overall characteristics that a certifi ed eco-label must fulfi l. However, for application purposes it is advisable to consult the regulations of each specifi c eco-labelling body.

The main existing eco-labelling schemes concern the following product groups:

• Offi ce equipment and supplies;

• Household appliances;

• Home hygiene and cleaning;

• Clothing and footwear;

• Gardening products;

• Do-it-yourself products;

• Tourism;

• Materials;

• Construction.

ISO 14025:2006: Environmental labels and declarations — Type III environmental declarations — Principles and proceduresObjectives: Stimulating the demand for products and services with lower environmental burdens by providing relevant information on their life cycle to address the purchaser’s demands for environmental information.

Summary: ISO 14025:2006 establishes the principles and specifi es the procedures for developing Type III envi-ronmental declaration programmes and Type III environmental declarations. It specifi cally establishes the use of the ISO 14040 series of standards in the development of Type III environmental declaration programmes and Type III environmental declarations.

ISO 14025:2006 establishes principles for the use of environmental information, in addition to those given inISO 14020:2000. The Type III eco-labels, as defi ned by ISO/TR 14025, provide standardised LCA-based information


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on a product or a service, through diagrams presenting a set of relevant environmental indicators (global warming, resource consumption, waste, etc.), accompanied by an interpretation of the information. Type III environmental declarations are primarily intended for use in business-to-business communication, but their use in business-to-consumer communication under certain conditions is not precluded.

A Type III environmental declaration is intended to provide a quantitative and verified description of the performance of products and services which is:

• objective and reliable, due to the use of scientifi cally accepted and valid methods of life cycle assessment (LCA);

• open to all products and services, due to the absence of valuations and predetermined environmental perform-ance levels that must be met;

• updateable, since its contents can be amended if necessary after appropriate external review and verifi cation of the new improvements achieved;

• instructive, as it can provide additional information, explaining environmental, economical or social issues to help interpret the information given.

ISO 14040: 2006 Environmental management – Life Cycle Assessment – Principles and frameworkObjectives: To evaluate the cumulative environmental impacts resulting from all stages in the product life cycle and to provide a comprehensive overview of the environmental characteristics of products or processes.

Summary: Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) studies the environmental aspects throughout a product’s life, from “cra-dle” to “grave”: from raw material extraction, including material transportation, until ultimate product disposal.

ISO 14040:2006 provides a clear overview of the practice, applications and limitations of Life Cycle Assess-ment to a broad range of potential users and stakeholders, including those with a limited knowledge of LCA.ISO 14040:2006 describes the principles and framework for LCA, including defi nition of the goal and scope of the LCA, the life cycle inventory analysis (LCI) phase, the life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) phase, the life cycle interpretation phase, reporting and critical review of the LCA, limitations of the LCA, the relationship between the LCA phases, and the conditions for use of value choices and optional elements. ISO 14040:2006 covers LCA stud-ies and life cycle inventory (LCI) studies. It does not describe the LCA technique in detail, nor does it specify meth-odologies for the individual phases of the LCA. The intended application of LCA or LCI results is considered during the defi nition of the goal and scope, but the application itself is outside the scope of this International Standard.






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ISO 14044:2006 Environmental management – Life Cycle Assessment – Require-ments and guidelinesObjectives: ISO 14044:2006 is designed for the preparation, conduct, and critical review of life cycle inventory (LCI) analysis. It also provides guidance on the impact assessment phase of LCA and on the interpretation of LCA results, as well as the nature and quality of the data collected.

Summary: ISO 14044:2006 specifi es requirements and provides guidelines for LCA including defi nition of the goal and scope of the LCA, the life cycle inventory analysis (LCI) phase, the life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) phase, the life cycle interpretation phase, reporting and critical review of the LCA, limitations of the LCA, re-lationship between the LCA phases, and conditions for the use of value choices and optional elements. ISO 14044:2006 covers LCA studies and life LCI studies. LCA studies the environmental aspects throughout a prod-uct’s life, from “cradle” to “grave”, i.e. from raw material extraction, including material transportation, until ultimate product disposal.

ISO/TS 14048:2002 Environmental management – Life Cycle Assessment – Data documentation formatObjectives: ISO/TS 14048:2002 describes a documentation format for data of product systems and unit proc-esses as described in ISO 14040:2006 and 14044:2006.

Summary: ISO/TS 14048 provides the requirements and a structure for a data documentation format to be used for transparent and unambiguous documentation and exchange of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) data, thus permitting consistent documentation of data, reporting of data collection, data calcula-tion and data quality by specifying and structuring relevant information.

The data documentation format specifi es requirements on division of data documentation into data fi elds, each with an explanatory description. The description of each data fi eld is further specifi ed by the structure of the data documentation format.

This standard has been the basis of the integration of standards for environmental management and stand-ards for PDT. In fact, only by the use of standardised information models, it is possible to share, exchange and store environmental data among different end-users using different HW/SW systems.


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ISO/TR 14062:2002 Environmental management – Integrating environmentalaspects into product design and developmentObjectives: ISO/TR 14062:2002 describes concepts and current practices relating to the integration of environ-mental aspects into product design and development.

Summary: ISO/TR 14062 covers strategies, organisation, planning, tools and the design development scheme for the integration of environmental aspects into the product design and development process.

It also includes examples of how to do it and describes the processes, tools and reviews for its integration into the ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 Management Systems. ISO/TR 14062:2002 is applicable to the development of sector-specifi c documents. It is not applicable as a specifi cation for certifi cation and registration purposes.


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IMP3roveCHAPTER 6: Example of Life Cycle Analysis

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6. Example of Life Cycle Analysis

Foreword

The example given in this handbook is useful for any class of users in order to understand the quantity of data which needs to be collected to perform a life cycle analysis and, as a consequence, the need for a standardised and globally accepted format to exchange these data. The example uses the data from the ELCD data base of the European Commission8 which is a very important source of information for the life cycle thinking approach.However, it would not be suffi cient for the “certifi cation”” of the environmental impact of a specifi c product as in this case the producer should collect the data from the “real world”. This means, for instance, that the fi nal conclusion of this example, which claims that a wooden roof has a lower environmental impact than a roof made with bricks and concrete, would be realistic if the roof is built in northern Europe, but probably would not, if it is built in the Sahara desert or even on a Greek island. In this second case, in fact, bricks made from local clay would be more environmentally friendly than wood taken from elsewhere.

To perform an LCA in “the real world” it will be necessary to collect and share data among different enter-prises using different data representations. For this reason it is very important to spread the use of inter-national standards for product data exchange which is the main objective of the DEPUIS project.

If the ELCD data base itself would conform to the PDT standards this will be a big step forward in promoting the use of the international standards developed by ISO also in the fi eld of environmental management. The ELCD website includes the statement that ALL the LCA software vendors have agreed to provide an interface to down-load the ELCD data sets. However, the data records cannot be accessed individually and the representation of the ELCD data is restricted by the limitations of the XML language which could be overcome by the use of ISO stand-ards integrated with the web ontology described in the previous chapter.

Life Cycle AnalysisA Life Cycle Analysis is the investigation and valuation of the environmental impacts of a given product using, as guidance, ISO 14040 and ISO 14044.

8 http://lca.jrc.ec.ec.europa.eu/lcainfohub/index.vm

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The procedure has the following stages:

• Identify the goal and scope;

• Identify the system boundaries;

• Compile the Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) – model the product system, collect, describe and verify data;

• Carry out a life cycle impact assessment – based on the results of the LCI;

• Interpret the results.

LCA – Goal and scopeDefi ning the goal and scope is the fi rst step. When determining the goal of the study it is important to defi ne why the study is being carried out. The scope should be defi ned on the basis of the goal, the available resources and, in terms of the functional unit, the reference fl ow, system boundaries and data quality requirements. The functional unit is a measure of the functional performance of the output of the product system – which may have several functions. The functional unit that best describes the system in line with the goal and scope of the study will be chosen.

In this example, the goal is to compare two methods of covering a building:

• A wooden roof;

• A standard roof in brick and concrete.

The scope is to derive quantitative elements to promote the use of wood and to identify possibilities for improvement. The functional unit is a roof frame to cover 192 square me-tres of a building and is illustrated in the dia-gram below. Only the LCA of the wooden roof is considered in this example.

LCA – system boundariesThe product system is a collection of unit sys-tems which perform one of more functions. Figure 16: Illustration of the functional unit of the LCA






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These unit processes are connected by fl ows of intermediate products. These fl ows should be arranged in data categories to facilitate understanding, e.g. energy resources, air emissions, water emissions, etc. The system boundaries defi ne which unit processes are to be included in the product system under study. In this study the following processes have been excluded: forestry practices, the use phase, the end-of-life, materials of negligible quantities, e.g. cut-offs.

LCI – Life Cycle InventoryThe Life Cycle Inventory phase (LCI) is the gathering of information regarding the quantities of energy, materials and other resources needed to manufacture the product along with the estimates of the waste produced and the emissions to air and water. A detailed breakdown of the product, listing the components that it comprises, is also required. The collection of data has the largest infl uence on the usefulness of the result and consumes most of the resources of the study. The preparations for data collection should be made carefully in order to use these resources as effi ciently as possible.

It is recommended to:

• create an overview of the most relevant processes and environmental interventions;

• identify the unit processes for which data needs to be collected;

• build a process fl owchart – a qualitative graphical presentation of all relevant processes involved in the life cycle of the system studied.

For building the flowchart:

• start with the manufacturing process of the main product;

• add the previous and following main stag-es – resources, components, consumption and waste;

• combine or subdivide processes where appropriate.

The roof frame illustrated in fi gure 16 is made from laminated timber. The sequence of manufacturing operations for the produc-

Figure 17: Components for a wooden roof

Example of Life Cycle Analysis

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tion of a laminated timber beam, starting from sheets of kiln dried natural timber, is: eliminate defects, con-trol moisture, machine fi nger joint, apply bonding ad-hesive, make joint, plane surface, apply surface adhe-sive, overlap layers, press assembly of layers, plane laminated beam to size, check quality.

The components for the manufacture of the whole roof structure are shown in fi gure 17.

A source of data for compiling the inputs and outputs is the ELCD database of the European Commission9, in fi gure 18 the European web site.

The data can be compiled in a manual form, using the format specifi ed in ISO 14048, or in a computer-ised form, using one of the standards summarised in Chapter 4. The ELCD data system can be interfaced to LCA software that will create a model of the product system. The LCA software will organise the information into a Life Cycle Inventory and then proceed to generate an impact assessment. The results of this case study were generated by the SimaPro software system10

Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA)In the Impact Assessment phase of the LCA, all the inventoried inputs and outputs are related to their environ-mental consequences and then their impacts are assessed. The result is a Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) profi le.

A product designer, purchaser or environmental strategist does not have to develop an impact assessment meth-od. The impact assessment methods are built into the software. However, the selection of impact categories, category indicators and characterisation model involves some subjective choices and these choices have to be documented as part of the LCA process. The impacts are defined as the consequences of the input and output streams of a system on human health, ecological health and resource depletion (end-points).

Figure 18: The ELCD database of the European Commission

9 http://lca.jrc.ec.ec.europa.eu/lcainfohub/index.vm

10 http://www.pre.nl






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LCIA consists of mandatory and optional elements. The mandatory elements are:

• selection of impact categories, category indicators and characterisation models;

• assignment of LCI results to the selected impact categories (classifi cation);

• calculation of category indicator results (characterisation).

The optional elements are: normalisation, grouping, weighting and additional LCIA data quality analysis.

For this example, the categories of impacts (mid-points) are: greenhouse gases, ozone layer depletion, acidifi ca-tion, eutrophication, hazardous materials, carcinogens, winter smog, summer smog, pesticides, energy and solid waste.

The fi nal step in the LCIA is the calculation of the results of the category indicators, known as characterisation and creating a characterisation model. This calculation is performed by the LCA software by multiplying the LCI data with characterisation factors.

The characterisation factors are related to the impact assessment method and represent the relative effect of the impact category compared to a reference substance.

For example, the reference factor for greenhouse gas is CO2. The characterisation factor for CH4 compared to CO2 is 21 and this means that 1 kg of CH4 has the same impact as 21 kg of CO2.

LCIA Profi leThe result of the three mandatory steps of the life cycle impact assessment is an LCIA profile: a measure-ment of how large the environmental impact from the process system is on each impact category or category indicator. The components that contribute the most effects are examined in detail before proceeding to the nor-malisation phase.

NormalisationNormalisation is an optional element that can be performed to facilitate the interpretation of the results of the LCIA. The scores for each environmental impact can be normalised to relate them to a reference and to all the results in order to be seen in a meaningful context.


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The normalised results allow for the answers to questions such as: ‘how much of the environmental deteriora-tion in an area is caused by the system investigated?’, or ‘is the new system more environmentally friendly than another one?’.

Interpretation – identifi cation of signifi cant issues

In the interpretation phase, the results are checked and evaluated for consistency with the goal and scope in order to ensure that the study is complete. The results of this phase are conclusions, recommendations and reports.

The identification of the significant issues is the element of the assessment where the results of the LCI and LCIA phases are considered. The reasons for identifying the significant issues include:

• knowing the share of a particular process or life cycle stage in an emission or impact category may provide opportunities for the redesign of product or processes or for the adoption of prevention strategies;

• an analysis of contributions points out those elements that make the highest contributions to an emission or impact category and a precise knowledge for the data that correspond to those elements is therefore a prereq-uisite for a precise LCA result.

By the use of PDT technology described in the previous chapter, a designer would be able to evaluate the en-vironmental impact of a product while he is designing it. Such a type of information could in fact be integrated in a CAD or CAM system and the designer could choose different materials and, as a consequence, realise a different design to decrease the environmental impact of the product.

Significant issues which might be considered during the design phase are:

• inventory parameters such as energy use, emissions, waste, ...;

• impact category indicators such as use of resources, emissions, waste, ...;

• essential contributions for life cycle stages to LCI or LCIA results such as individual unit processes;

• groups of processes, e.g. transportation, energy production, ...

The integration of PDT and environmental management data would allow a comparison between different solu-tions. In fi gure 19 a comparison between the wooden roof and a roof made from bricks and concrete is shown.






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The wooden roof has a better environmental performance compared to a brick-cement roof for all non-negligible categories of impacts, with only two exceptions: the summer smog, or the formation of photochemical oxidants and energy.

For photochemical smog, the environmental effect of the wooden roof is equal to 19.9 kg eq. ethylene. This is mainly caused by the presence of the insulation, composed of extruded polystyrene, which produces 13.8kg C2H4 (69%). An alternative solution could be to use wood fi bres.

The environmental effect of the energy consumption takes into account all the energy consumed and energy subtracted from the environment (material with an energy content). Much of this energy is stored in the roof as feedstock energy. The stored energy amount is 1.2E+5 MJ and the total energy is 2.25E+5 MJ. This energy can be reused or recovered at the end-of-life by reusing the wood or by burning it in a boiler. In the case of the brick-

greenh.

Brick-cement roof

Compare boxes: Method SimaPro 3.0 Eco-indicator 95 / Europe g/ normalisation

Wooden roof

ozone. ocidif. eutroph. humetols corcin. w.smog s.smog pesticid energy solid

4

3

2

1

Figure 19: Comparative analysis of a wooden roof and a roof of brick and cement


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cement roof, the energy consumption is mostly spent in the production process and cannot be recovered at the end-of-life.

A basic course in eco-design on the DEPUIS website helps to set up a methodology for improving the en-vironmental impact of products to meet the requirements of the IPP directive as well as all the directives dealing with waste reduction. Likewise, a course in environmental directives is available.

In conclusion, the possibility of using the European Infohub as a “typical” input for the existing designer tools (CAD, CAM, CAE, etc.) using PDT standards will facilitate the LCI of new products and will introduce the life cycle thinking concept for any designer.

The LCA software could be integrated or even embedded in new software developed for specifi c applications.

Simple tools could be developed so that SMEs could collect, by the use of the OWL technology, the necessary data from the European Infohub and/or similar sources. These data would be used for LCI evaluation of their own product that could be shared with customers and for eco-labelling certifi cation by means of the same OWL technology.


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IMP3roveCHAPTER 7: Lessons Learned and Future Perspectives

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7. Lessons Learned and Future Perspectives

This chapter provides suggestions to all user classes on how to sustain eco-design and a wider use of the existing standards within their activities. The advantages of using ISO standards are again underlined and the activities within the outreach and education committee of ISO TC 184 are also described as a future possible implementa-tion of the DEPUIS website.

A paragraph is dedicated to the qualifi cation and certifi cation of new skills for a better exploitation of the interna-tional standards promoted through the contents of the multimedia handbook published on the DEPUIS website.

7.1 If you are... then you should...

In order to make profi table use of the international standards to widely promote eco-design each end-user of this handbook will have a different role. In this section some hints are provided for fi nal users.

The DEPUIS website contains a detailed table on the type of competences each end-user should possess.In fi gure 20, the table competences for each end-user provides a list of subjects with three different letters: “A” stands for “awareness”, “K” stands for “knowledge” and “S” stands for “Skill”.

Figure 20: A partial view of the table of competences required for each user’s class.


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• Decision makers should be aware of the existence of these standards and should start to require their use whenever possible when ordering, if necessary, new software, when recruiting personnel, and when preparing calls for tenders;

• Teachers should begin to introduce into their programme the importance of using international standards in order to improve communication in the globalised world. Nowadays, students know very well how to communi-cate on the internet and they are familiar with the ontology of the web language which could be a new subject in the ICT studies;

• Universities, especially technical universities, should introduce a compulsory course in environmental man-agement and Product Data Technology standards in order to have future entrepreneurs or designers already skilled in the subject;

• Designers should start to purchase software that is compatible with the PDT standards. Many CAD systems have already embedded such capacity but very few ask for them or use them to exchange or store their own fi les. The practice of storing design data in a STEP fi le should spread in order to make sure that their own data can still be accessed whenever needed - even if the hardware/software system which generated the data does not exist anymore. Besides, the integration of the product design data with information coming from an LCA practitioner will allow them to produce environmentally friendly products;

• Software developers should know the standards in order to implement them when developing new software for the customers and should advise their customer on the importance of the use of these standards. If soft-ware developers would learn the use of PDT standards very well, they could do a sort of “plug and play” by reusing the same software tailored each time for different customers’ needs. This will ensure them less work to produce new software of better quality.

• LCA practitioners should integrate their skills into the design phase in order to prevent the use of materials and products which have a high environmental impact or are diffi cult to manage in the end of the life cycle of the product. The use of standardized representation of product data will make this activity a routine activity for any designer;

• Consultants should know and keep up-to-date with the development of PDT standards in order to advise their customers when to purchase software and when to implement these standards in a business in order to im-prove the data management of an enterprise.

• SMEs should be aware of the existence of this technology and request it whenever possible or asking for advice to consultants who have the qualifi cations.






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The multimedia handbook on the DEPUIS website contains a test as a tool to make an enterprise aware of the importance of interoperability and the man-agement of technical data for eco-design.

The test does not provide any grade or suggestion but helps it any enterprise to understand if they have “un-der control” their own data and how much they know of the existing standards. It takes only a few minutes to fi ll but helps to understand that every business should be more careful in managing data with pro-prietary software which does not use standards lan-guages necessary - not only for the interoperability of different systems, but also for data archiving which is necessary for the disposal of products at the end of their life cycle as well as in the design phase as a nec-essary information for eco-design. Figure 21 shows the interface of the test in the multimedia handbook.

7.2 The PDT standards and the role of the outreach and education committeeof ISO TC 184 SC4

The ISO TC 184 committee has been operating for more than 25 years. In the beginning the activity was promoted by large companies which could afford the cost of developing very expensive software using the standards. Com-panies belonged to the aircraft, automobile, oil, ship, etc. sectors and they are still supporting the development of new standards to facilitate the communication within and among companies. Nowadays, any enterprise, especially big multinational enterprises, have to improve communication also with their suppliers which, in many cases, are SMEs in many different countries. Therefore, SMEs have to be ready to exchange information using these stand-ards if they do not want to lose their customers. On the other hand the integrated product policy obliges any en-terprise to accomplish the environmental directives asking for low environmental impact products. In other words, any enterprise has to produce not only products but also data which need to be collected throughout the entire supplier chain. Additionally, the criteria which apply to quality of products also need to be applied to the quality of data in order to produce a reliable LCA.

Figure 21: A fragment of the interface of the test for the evaluation of data management inside an enterprises


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ISO TC 184 SC4 has also tried to reach the SMEs but it has been possible only for the supplier of large enterprises which were compelled by the latter to do so. A few years ago, a new committee was created within SC4: the out-reach and education committee (O&E) the purpose of which is to improve the knowledge transfer between the community of experts of the PDT standards and the “outside world”.

The main objectives of the O&E committee are to:

• persuade industry that they will benefi t from exploiting SC4 deliverables, because they enable innovation and facilitate key business processes by inducing interoperability of different systems within and outside enter-prises;

• facilitate the deployment of SC4 standards in order to obtain more SC4-compliant software

• increase the awareness in order to persuade decision makers to set up a strategy for pushing the market in the right direction;

• improve the exploitation of the standards by:

• simplifying and making more lucid and concise the description of the standards;

• facilitating development of training courses;

• stimulating the participation of young developers;

• conveying broader industry participation to development;

• increasing collaboration with other standards activities.

Many of the activities foreseen for the O&E committee of ISO TC 184 SC4 have been developed for DEPUIS since many objectives were identical. Because the coordinator of the DEPUIS project is also the chairperson of the O&E it has been agreed, during the last meeting of the SC4 committee, that SC4 will use the same tools, i.e. the Mul-timedia Handbook. This decision will help the exploitation of all the standards developed by SC4 as only some of them were considered in the Multimedia Handbook due to a lack of resources. Other standards would cover other aspects not taken into consideration in this handbook but which could be relevant to many enterprises.

Other technical committees of ISO could use the multimedia handbook to exploit their standards. The ISO techni-cal committee TC 211, for example, which has a liaison with ISO TC 184, is going to provide information on their activity on Geographic Information System (GIS) which could be relevant for the LCA when characterising the origin of components or for purchasing materials.






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7.3 The qualification and certification of new skills for eco-design and PDT

In the last years the need to exchange - but above all to store product data in reliable electronic format - has increased considerably due to many reasons:

• compliance with quality assurance requirements;

• maintenance and life cycle support of complex products;

• Life Cycle Analysis;

• Compliance with health and safety requirements;

• product liability requirements;

• recycling or disposal of the products at the end-of-life.

Software vendors are developing many tools for product management and usually they are not compliant to exist-ing standards. This means that once a customer has decided to manage his own data with such software this data is linked to this vendor for “life”.

He would, in fact, be unable to read his own data with other software, unless it is done by means of a very costly operation of data entry if any of the following situations happen:

• need to upgrade the systems with better software;

• his customer requires a different data format;

• the software does not exist anymore.

In this framework there is a continuous risk that speculation by a non skilled software entrepreneur will spoil the advantages of the ICT technologies based on international standards. No adequate software producers will produce a boomerang effect on enterprises which would spend a lot of money on products that do not solve their problem.

In order to provide the market with consultants and software developers who meet the requirements described in this handbook, DEPUIS partners have set up, together with interested parties, profi les of professionals in order to provide end-users with the necessary confi dence that the expectations for their services will be met.


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CEPAS (www.cepas.it), the Italian certifi cation body for personnel, is a partner of the DEPUIS project and is a full member of IPF (International Personnel Cer-tifi cation Association) www.iatca.com. CEPAS is also accredited by SINCERT which is the national accredi-tation body linked to a mutual recognition system to the analogous accreditation national bodies all over Europe. Figure 22 shows the European network for accreditation bodies. The certifi cation schema used by CEPAS follows the standard ISO/IEC 17024 (ex EN 45013) “General requirements for bodies operating certifi cation of persons”. Certifi cation means that CEPAS does not perform training by itself, but it is ac-credited to verify whether “third parties” are adopt-ing the right procedure for the specifi c training.

The general criteria identifi ed by ISO 17024 are related to the participation of all the stakeholders to the defi nition of the competences needed: the competence of the teachers, absence of confl ict of interest among certifi cation body and trainers, transparency, impartiality, confi dentiality and security.

“The certifi cation of a person establishes that a person, evaluated by a third party, according to precise rules, fulfi ls specifi ed competence requirements, defi ned with the interested parties, to work with professionalism in a specifi c line of business”.

The certifi cation schema identifi ed by CEPAS is shown in fi gure 23.

The above fi gure shows that before a person can be certifi ed he or she has to show evidence of work ex-perience in the specifi c area of competence; he or she has to pass a specifi c qualifi ed course and has to show evidence of application of what he or she has learned and fi nally has to pass an exam before being registered as a person of a certifi ed skill. The CEPAS Professionals’ Register will ensure that the registered professional not only has the necessary technical ex-pertise, but also respects the ethical code and under-takes a continuous professional development.

Figure 22: The European network for accreditation bodies

Figure 23: The certifi cation schema for professional skills






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The DEPUIS partners have defi ned the requirements and the specifi cations referred to the key players for the exploitation of ISO CT 184 and ISO TC 207 standards. These requirements are listed in the Multimedia Handbook and Figure 24 (A and B) shows two of these profi les.

Among the requirements needed for any profile, the maintenance and renewal of the qualifications require:

• the absence of customer claims;

• at least 8 hours of professional updating every year and continuous improvement; and

• ethical respect.

The professional updating is very important for facilitating the transfer of the continuous innovation in eco-design.

Many of the courses realized for the DEPUIS project, both the e-learning courses and the video lessons supply the theoretical basis for meeting the requirements of the listed skills of professionals, but this theoretical basis needs to be integrated into practical lessons in a classroom as well as practiced in working environments. A fi nal test will verify the competences obtained.

Figure 24 B: Different competences for different skills in the environmental management domain

(ABB)Bachelor degreein Enineering

PDT_Primermechanicsbachelor

electricbachelor

electronicsbachelor

softwarebachelor

chemistrybachelor

others...

others...PLIB expertOiI & gasexpert

others...

ISO10903Architecture

ISO10303SoftwareDeveloper(SDAI)

ISO10303Core expert

ISO10303Geometry expert(AP203 214)

ISO10303PDM expert(AP203 214)

ISO10303Maintenanceexpert (AP230)

ISO10303 Printedcircuit board expert(AP210)

Figure 24 A: Different competences for different skills in the PDT domain


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Concluding RemarksThe DEPUIS Handbook has been developed in order to provide a good basis of knowledge for both environ-mental data management and product data technology. The reader should note that the main product of the DEPUIS project is not this handbook but the Multimedia Handbook on the DEPUIS website which provides more exhaustive information on the most frequently used international standards together with hints for further information.

We encourage the dissemination of this handbook and also its translation into other languages in order to reach a broader audience.

If any reader is interested to implement, promote or integrate the contents of this handbook, or is interested in promoting qualifi cation courses for consultants, as described in section 6.3, he is invited to contact the coordina-tor of the DEPUIS project at the following address: [email protected] .


GlossaryThis glossary contains some of the terms used in the multimedia handbook.

Acidification: acidifi cation is the name given to the ongoing decrease in the pH of the Earth’s water, caused by their uptake of anthropogenic carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Between 1751 and 1994 surface ocean pH is estimated to have decreased from approximately 8.179 to 8.104 (a change of -0.075).

Depletion: resource depletion is an economic term referring to the exhaustion of raw materials within a region. Resources are commonly divided between renewable resources and non-renewable resources. Use of either of these forms of resources beyond their rate of replacement is considered to be resource depletion.

Desertification: desertifi cation is the degradation of land in arid and dry sub-humid areas resulting primarily from human activities and infl uenced by climatic variations. A major impact of desertifi cation is biodiversity loss and loss of productive capacity, for example, by transition from land dominated by shrublands to non-native grasslands.

Eco-toxicology: short- and long-term pathways and interactions of substances and chemical mixtures in environ-mental systems and subsystems on their bioavailability, circulation, and assimilation in target organisms, as well as biological responses of these organisms, and damage mechanisms (endocrine disruption, genotoxicity); and on their subsequent fate in the food chain, including humans.

EOL: End-Of-Life is a term used with respect to a retailed product, indicating that the product is in the end of its product lifetime and a vendor will no longer be marketing, selling, or promoting a particular product and may also be limiting or ending support for said product.

Eutrophication: eutrophication is an increase in chemical nutrients -- typically compounds containing nitrogen or phosphorus -- in an ecosystem. It may occur on land or in water. The term is however often used to mean the resultant increase in the ecosystem’s primary productivity (excessive plant growth and decay), and further effects including lack of oxygen and severe reductions in water quality, fi sh, and other animal populations.

Fossil fuels: fossil fuels or mineral fuels are fossil source fuels, that is, hydrocarbons found within the top layer of the Earth’s crust. They range from volatile materials with low carbon:hydrogen ratios like methane, to liquid petroleum to non-volatile materials composed of almost pure carbon, like anthracite coal. Methane can be found in hydrocarbon fi elds, alone, associated with oil, or in the form of methane clathrates.

Global warming: is the increase in the average measured temperature of the Earth’s near-surface air and oceans since the mid-20th century, and its projected continuation.

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Greenhouse gases: greenhouse gases are gaseous constituents of the atmosphere, both natural and anthropo-genic, which absorb and emit radiation at specifi c wavelengths within the spectrum of thermal infrared radiation emitted by the Earth’s surface, the atmosphere itself, and by clouds.

IPP: Integrated Product Policy is a directive of the European Commission which seeks to minimise effects on environment by looking at all phases of a products’ life cycle (from cradle to grave) and taking action where it is most effective.

ISO: International Organization for Standardization has developed over 17,000 International Standards on a vari-ety of subjects and 1100 new ISO standards are published every year. The full range of technical fi elds can be seen from the ISO web site (www.iso.org).

ISO 10303 – usually known as STEP, the standard for the exchange of product model data – provides a common data backbone for linking systems that create or use product information.

ISO TC 184 SC4: ISO Technical Committee 184, sub-committee 4. This committee has developed the PDT stand-ards.

ISO TC 207: ISO Technical Committee 207. This committee has developed all the standards for environmental management.

LCA: a Life Cycle Assessment, also known as: life cycle analysis, ecobalance or cradle-to-grave-analysis, is the investigation and valuation of the environmental impacts of a given product or service caused or necessitated by its existence. It is a variant of input-output analysis, focusing on physical rather than monetary fl ows.

LCI: a Life Cycle Inventory involves the modelling of the product system, data collection, as well as the description and verifi cation of data.

LCIA: a Life Cycle Impact Assessment is aimed at evaluating the contribution to impact categories such as global warming, acidifi cation etc.

LCT: Life Cycle Thinking is a process in decision making taking into account all resources consumed and all envi-ronmental and health impacts that are associated with the life cycle of a product. Life Cycle Thinking is comple-mentary to a number of other assessment techniques such as chemical risk assessment with its focus on specifi c substances or environmental management tools with focus on sites or companies.

OWL: the Web Ontology Language is a family of knowledge representation languages for authoring ontologies, and is endorsed by the World Wide Web Consortium.


Ozone depletion: ozone depletion describes two distinct, but related observations: a slow, steady decline of about 4 per cent per decade in the total amount of ozone in Earth’s stratosphere since the late 1970s; and a much larger, but seasonal, decrease in stratospheric ozone over Earth’s polar regions during the same period. The latter phe-nomenon is commonly referred to as the ozone hole. In addition to this well-known stratospheric ozone depletion, there are also tropospheric ozone depletion events, which occur near the surface in polar regions during spring.

PDT: Product Data Technology are International Standards for product data representation and are the equiva-lent engineering specifi cations that provide a neutral mechanism for describing product data throughout the life cycle of a product and that are independent of any particular software system. The nature of this description makes it suitable for neutral fi le exchange between different computer systems, but also as a basis for implement-ing and sharing product databases and long-term archiving. The development and implementation of these prod-uct data standards and their use as specifi cations to manage the information fl ows in the life cycle of a product is called information engineering. Just as with standards that are engineering specifi cations for hardware, these product data standards can be used as the basis for quality control and quality assurance of product data and so ensure its validity and reliability.

RDF: the Resource Description Framework is a family of World Wide Web Consortium specifi cations, originally designed as a metadata data model, which has come to be used as a general method of modelling information through a variety of syntax formats.

Semantic Web: the Semantic Web is an evolving extension of the World Wide Web in which the semantics of infor-mation and services on the web is defi ned, making it possible for the web to understand and satisfy the requests of people and machines to use the web content.

Smog: smog is a kind of air pollution; the word “smog” is a portmanteau of smoke and fog. Classic smog results from large amounts of coal burning in an area and is caused by a mixture of smoke and sulphur dioxide. Modern smog does not usually come from coal but from vehicular and industrial emissions that are acted on in the atmos-phere by sunlight to form secondary pollutants that also combine with the primary emissions to form photochemi-cal smog.

UBL: Universal Business Language is intended to support and to encourage an incremental transition from pa-per-based trade to electronic trade. UBL has been ratifi ed as a standard by the OASIS group.

URI: Uniform Resource Identifi er is an identifi er used on the Internet to identify a resource (the Internet jargon for “thing”).

W3C: the World Wide Web Consortium develops interoperable technologies (specifi cations, guidelines, software, and tools) to lead the Web to its full potential. W3C is a forum for information, commerce, communication and col-lective understanding (www.w3.org).

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WEEE Directive: the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive is the European Community directive 2002/96/EC on waste electrical and electronic equipment which, together with the RoHS Directive 2002/95/EC, became European Law in February 2003, setting collection, recycling and recovery targets for all types of electri-cal goods.

XML: Extensible Markup Language is a simple, very fl exible text format derived from SGML (ISO 8879). Originally, it was designed to meet the challenges of large-scale electronic publishing; XML is also playing an increasingly important role in the exchange of a wide variety of data on the Web and elsewhere (www.w3.org/xml).


References

1. Integrated Product Policyhttp://ec.europa.eu/environment/ipp

2. DEPUIS Project websitehttp://www.depuis.enea.it

3. Methodology for LCAhttp://lca.jrc.ec.europa.eu/lcainfohub/introduction.vm

4. ENEA report SIEC OT-SCA-00020, 2000 (in italian)

5. European Life Cycle Platformhttp://lca.jrc.ec.ec.europa.eu/lcainfohub/index.vm

6. Sima Pro softwarehttp://www.pre.nl

7. Title of parts of ISO 10303http://www.tc184-sc4.org/titles/STEPtitles.htm

8. ISO Guide 77: Guide for the specification of products and classes, ISO, Genevahttp://www.iso.org

9. PLIB Portalhttp://www.plib.ensma.fr

10. eCl@ss Product Information Systemhttp://www.eclass.de

11. CASCADE Project websitehttp://www.pdt.enea.it

12. Universal Business Languagehttp://docs.oasis-open.org/ubl/os-UBL-2.0/UBL-2.0.html

13. Electronic Business using eXtensible Markup Languagehttp://www.ebxml.org

14. OASIShttp://www.oasis-open.org

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List of Partners in the DEPUIS Project

ENEA, Centro Research Casacciawww.casaccia.enea.it (coordinator)

CEPAS, Italywww.cepas.it

Caesar Systems Ltd, U.K.www.caesarsystems.co.uk

Envirolink North West Ltd, U.K.www.envirolinknorthwest.co.uk

Escola Superior de Comerç Internacional, Spainwww.esci.es

Ferroday Limited, U.K.www.ferroday.co.uk

LKSoftware GmbH, Germanywww.lksoft.de

UAB LKSoft Baltic, Lithuaniawww.lksoft.lt

POSC-CAESAR Association, Norwaywww.posccaesar.com

USPI-NL, Netherlandswww.uspi.nl


Useful links

DEPUIS Projecthttp://depuis.enea.it

CASCADE Projectwww.pdt.enea.it

ISO TC184/SC4www.tc184-sc4.org

International Organization for Standardizationwww.iso.org

European Unionwww.europa.eu.int

European Commission Life Cycle Information Hubhttp://lca.jrc.ec.europa.eu/

European Committee for Standardisation (CEN)www.cen.eu

Europe INNOVAwww.europe-innova.org

ECO SMEswww.ecosmes.net

WikiSTEPwww. wikistep.org

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CALCAS Projectwww.calcasproject.net

UNEP/SETAC Life Cycle Initiativehttp://licinitiative.unep.fr

Organisation for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS)http://oasis-open.org

Further links can be obtained from the DEPUIS website which is updated periodically.

Coordinator:

ENEA, Centro Research CasacciaAnna Morenohttp://[email protected]

The DEPUIS handbook is published by a consortium of companies headed by EuroTop (Belgium)Innovation and Standards 2008


www.europe-innova.org

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