Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment: application to the automotive sector and challenges for the lightweighting

This research represents one of the first examples of Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment application to the lightweight design in the automotive sector. Beside an extensive literature review, mostly dedicated to identify the starting point of Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment (LCSA) and Social Life Cycle Assessment (S-LCA) in the automotive sector, this work provides contributions regarding S-LCA implementation and integration of results in the LCSA. Moreover, also LCA and LCC have been addressed as a way to find out environmental and economic issues related to lightweight solutions to be conveyed in the LCSA framework S-LCA was developed according to the methodology proposed by the Roundtable for Product Social Metrics initiative, and this represents another innovative element of this research that applied the social quantitative approach as the first case in the automotive sector. Moreover, an interesting contribution is given by the number of real case studies which involved LCA, LCC, S-LCA and LCSA evaluations. The relevance of this research is also provided by the substantial collaboration with the majority of Europe’s automotive OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) that have been involved both in the data collection, and results discussion. In some case companies were involved in the discussion about the role that LCSA might play in the early design phase of vehicle components, especially when lightweight solutions are explored. Finally, a contribution also regards the data availability increase, particularly for what concern environmental data for innovative materials, and related manufacturing technologies, in the lightweighting context.