Evaluating LCA product families in an approach to determine baseline emissions within aerospace manufacturing

Abstract

This paper investigates a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) based methodology to determine baseline emissions for an aerospace manufacturer. Aerospace manufacturing entails high complexity and low throughput of a vast array of components. Rather than establishing the environmental footprint through waste, electric, and gas data alone; an LCA cradle-to-gate approach extends to a product's raw material acquisition and shipment to provide a comprehensive set of environmental performance indicators. The approach combines several products that follow a similar manufacturing process and can be denoted as a product family. This paper discusses the ability that LCA product families must develop baseline emissions for products validated with a case study of an aerospace component. The methodology can be extended to other product families manufactured within the facility which when combined will accumulate to a site-wide environmental footprint. The paper further evaluates how this methodology can identify environmental hotspots at a process and product level. The aerospace component case study incorporates several manual and automated stages. This work aims to demonstrate the ease of determining baseline emissions using an LCA product family and enable aerospace manufacturing companies to adopt a similar approach to establishing environmental hotspots. This can drive strategic internal change for sustainable manufacturing aligning with company environmental, social, and financial frameworks.