Streamlined Life Cycle Assessment as a Decision-Support Tool for Strategic Life Cycle Management : Integrating PEF in Industrial Product Development

Sammanfattning

This thesis examines how a Streamlined Life Cycle Assessment built on the Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) method can support early-stage decisions in heavy construction equipment development, where much of a product's impact is determined before reliable data exist. These early decisions matter more as regulation tightens under the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive and the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation, yet full Life Cycle Assessment is often too data-intensive for concept-stage use and existing Streamlined methods lack a defensible link to EU regulatory structure and a principle-based definition of sustainability. This thesis develops a Streamlined LCA prototype integrating PEF with the three environmental Sustainability Principles and one social Sustainability Principle of the Framework for Strategic SustainableDevelopment. A Streamlined Life Cycle Matrix is scored against PEF's sixteen impact categories using a literature-based magnitude scalar and an influence layer. The prototype is applied to a soil compaction roller at the Case Company, compared against a parallel quantitative LCA, and assessed through practitioner interviews. The qualitative method converges with the quantitative reference on dominant hotspots and the top five impact categories. Practitioners reversed the prototype's intended upstream use, positioning it downstream of a completed quantitative LCA asa strategic instrument for leadership. The thesis concludes that a PEF-integrated Streamlined LCA can widen room for sustainability deliberation between engineering reference and management decision layers when supporting leadership conditions are met, while requiring further refinement before underpinning PEF-compliant or EPD-grade evidence.