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(11-06) LCI modelling of telecom products. Andrae, Anders*,1,2, Östermark, Ulf3, Carlson, Raul4, 1 Division of Electronics Production, Mölndal, Sweden2 Ericsson Enterprise Systems AB, Stockholm, Sweden3 Chalmers Industriteknik, Göteborg, Sweden4 Centre for Environmental Assessment of Product and Material Systems (CPM), Göteborg, Sweden ABSTRACT- The studied products, private branch telecommunication exchange Ericsson MD110 BC8 and BC10 systems, are complex electronic products making up very comprehensive systems, and comprising a very large number of electronic components. Altogether these products consist of approximately 2500 different electronic and mechanical components. If wanting to perform life cycle assessments it would be very time consuming to make life cycle inventories for all components. In order to manage the large number of components, electronic devices are modelled in depth (16 groups of components) for which archetype inventory models have been established. In order to achieve high quality data for both material composition and manufacturing processes, 80 suppliers were contacted, of which 43 responded with useful answers. About 50% of the component manufacturing processes lying between materials production and the manufacturing at Ericssons suppliers have been included. Here it should be stated that 50 % coverage i this stage is quite high compared to most other LCA on telecom products. Having excluded 50% of the manufacturing processes, because of unavailability of data, does of course call for caution in any future comparison of results in this LCA with any other LCA of similar products. The model has been used in other studies performed by other companies and has proven to be useful also outside the framework of Ericsson. It can be concluded that although the main purpose was to facilitate data acquisition for a specific project, the models can be used in other LCA projects that include electronics. This will form a fundament to start from, on which the company may subsequently refine its LCI data acquisition. Key words: LCI models, telecom, electronic equipment |
