Spatially Differentiated Sustainability Assessment of Products

Thies, Christian; Kieckhäfer, Karsten; Spengler, Thomas S.; Sodhi, Manbir S.

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-92237-9_17

Spatially Differentiated Sustainability Assessment of Products

Christian Thies⁶,
Karsten Kieckhäfer⁶,
Thomas S. Spengler^6,7 &
Manbir S. Sodhi⁷

Chapter
First Online: 23 September 2018

1586 Accesses
2 Citations

Part of the Sustainable Production, Life Cycle Engineering and Management book series (SPLCEM)

Abstract

Due to the globalization of supply chains, the environmental and social impacts related to products are often dispersed over many locations. Life cycle-oriented sustainability assessment methods aim at compiling the total impacts without explicitly considering their spatial distribution. This paper illustrates how the incorporation of spatial differentiation in sustainability assessment can influence assessment results and lead to different conclusions about the design of supply chains to improve product sustainability. Comparing two alternative configurations of a simplified supply chain for beer production and concentrating only on environmental impacts, it is found that the consideration of environmental and technological heterogeneity has the potential to reverse the rank order of the alternatives.

Keywords

Sustainability assessment
Spatial differentiation
Environmental heterogeneity
Technological heterogeneity

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Authors and Affiliations

Institute of Automotive Management and Industrial Production, Technische Universität Braunschweig, Mühlenpfordtstr. 23, 38106, Braunschweig, Germany
Christian Thies, Karsten Kieckhäfer & Thomas S. Spengler
Department of Mechanical, Industrial and Systems Engineering, University of Rhode Island, 103 Gilbreth Hall, Kingston, RI, 02881, USA
Thomas S. Spengler & Manbir S. Sodhi

Authors

Christian Thies
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Karsten Kieckhäfer
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Thomas S. Spengler
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Manbir S. Sodhi
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Christian Thies .

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Editors and Affiliations

Material Flow Management and Resource Economy, Technische Universität Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Hessen, Germany
Prof. Dr. Liselotte Schebek
Sustainable Manufacturing and Life Cycle Engineering, Technische Universität Braunschweig, Braunschweig, Germany
Prof. Dr. Christoph Herrmann
Sustainable Manufacturing and Life Cycle Engineering, Technische Universität Braunschweig, Braunschweig, Germany
Felipe Cerdas

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Thies, C., Kieckhäfer, K., Spengler, T.S., Sodhi, M.S. (2019). Spatially Differentiated Sustainability Assessment of Products. In: Schebek, L., Herrmann, C., Cerdas, F. (eds) Progress in Life Cycle Assessment. Sustainable Production, Life Cycle Engineering and Management. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92237-9_17

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92237-9_17
Published: 23 September 2018
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-92236-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-92237-9
eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)