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LCA in Business Decision Support Systems
David H. Reisdorph,^*   the GreenTeam Inc.

Companies can use life cycle concepts and life cycle assessment (LCA) as a tool in product and business development to guide design for the environment (DfE). The output of LCA provides comparative information that can guide product design and business decisions. However, most approaches and tools do not include decision supports that weigh multiple attributes and meld LCA output with business-related objectives such as financial and marketing targets. For LCA to be employed broadly in product design and business development, especially in small to medium sized enterprises, it needs to integrate with the business bottom line and do so in a user-friendly manner. Furthermore, the scarcity and quality of life cycle inventories from which to conduct LCA is a barrier to using life cycle approaches in product and business development.

With support from the Oklahoma Center for the Advancement of Science and Technology (OCAST research contract AR07.2-063), the GreenTeam Inc. is addressing the need to integrate LCA and business planning models. We are developing decision support systems designed to help businesses incorporate LCA in their product development and business planning activities. We will present preliminary results to develop decision support tools using methods such as analytical hierarchy processing, cluster and classification algorithms, and neural networks. Also, the problem of decision support in a low-information environment will be discussed.

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^* corresponding author: dreisdorph@thegreenteaminc.com