Abstract
The integration of social and environmental responsibility in the company is a major challenge to sustainable development. Both the strategic and organizational sustainable implementation helps the company to recognize risks at an early stage. At the same time by implementing sustainability in the management system legal demands and new standards can be recognized and realized quickly and efficiently. The UN Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) developed indicators serving as a reference for the legislation in the EU. With the introduction of REACH and the EU-GHS, the EU has taken one of the biggest hurdles initiating one of major UN Sustainable Development objectives according Agenda 21, Chapter 19 "Conservation & Management of Resources for Development". In the automotive industry both the selection of material and the creation of a life cycle concept for production, service and recycling (waste management) play a very important role by the reduction of CO2. As solution integrated systems are used for the product development under fulfilment of all legal demands and standards like iSIFrame. Components of iSIFrame are the iPoint Application Services (iPAS), the Multi-Agents and the Business Process Framework (iFlow) as well. iPAS integrates external as well as internal systems and applications. Content of the multi-agent technology is the process-oriented solution for each application area. The Compliance Agent provides integration and in-house applications to ensure efficient product-related requirements, legal environmental demands with regards to materials (ELV / IMDS, REACH, RoHS, RRR, etc.) to life cycle assessment and design for environment (LCA, DfE). The fast data access allows a qualitative selection of materials for lightweight construction and manufacturing technologies for components and modules, which is essentially required for the reduction of CO2 and sustainability. The functionality of the LCA and RRR module is shown on a case study. A hood with different material alternatives is used as example. It is shown how the environmental impact of the hood can be reduced and shows the influence of the recycling phase. So it is presented how designers can evaluate and improve the environmental impact of a vehicle in an early product development stage.
KEYWORDS – sustainable development, material, life cycle, recycling, standards, regulation