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Developing a decision support tool for life‐cycle cost assessments
Author(s) -
Weitz Keith A.,
Smith Joyce K.,
Warren John L.
Publication year - 1994
Publication title -
environmental quality management
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.249
H-Index - 27
eISSN - 1520-6483
pISSN - 1088-1913
DOI - 10.1002/tqem.3310040103
Subject(s) - life cycle assessment , risk analysis (engineering) , environmental impact assessment , product (mathematics) , product life cycle management , key (lock) , product lifecycle , engineering , computer science , environmental economics , new product development , business , economics , production (economics) , mechanical engineering , ecology , geometry , mathematics , computer security , marketing , biology , macroeconomics
Recent years have seen advancements in the development and use of life‐cycle assessment (LCA) analytic techniques. Although these techniques have highlighted the power of LCA to identify the environmental consequences of a product system through its entire life cycle, they have also highlighted a major shortcoming of LCA—the lack of cost information. Because companies make daily decisions that involve trade‐offs between economics and the environment, including cost information in LCA is critical for advancing its use as an overall environmental decision‐making tool. This article outlines the current state of LCA methodology development, defines key life‐cycle cost assessment terms and concepts, and evaluates existing cost assessment techniques with the objective of building an integrated life‐cycle cost assessment tool.