The residential sector is recognized as a major energy consumer and thus a significant contributor to climate change. Rather than focus only on current energy consumption and the associated emissions, there is a need to broaden sustainability research to include full life cycle contributions and impacts. This thesis looks at houses from the perspective of the Ecological Footprint (EF), a well-known sustainability indicator. The research objective is to integrate EF and Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) measures to provide an enhanced tool to measure the sustainability implications of residential energy retrofit decisions. Exemplifying single-detached houses of the early 20th century, the century-old REEP House (downtown Kitchener, Canada), together with its high performance energy retrofits, is examined in detail. This research combines material, energy and carbon emission studies. Its scope covers the life cycle of the house, including the direct and indirect consumption of material and energy, and concomitant carbon emissions during its stages of material extraction, transportation, construction, operation, and demolition. The results show that the REEP House had a significant embodied impact on the environment when it was built and high operating energy and EF requirements because of the low levels of insulation. Even though the renovations to improve energy efficiency by 80% introduce additional embodied environmental impacts, they are environmentally sound activities because the environmental payback period is less than two years.

Thesis (M. S.)--Mechanical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2008. / Committee Chair: Bert Bras; Committee Member: Beril Toktay; Committee Member: Shreyes Melkote.

<p>Given the context of globalization and growing competition, we assist at a reduction of the product life cycle and at a rapid diffusion of creations and innovations. To respond to the fast changing customers’ demand and to reinforce their market position, firms shall design an effective creative process offering superior customer value and insuring their future in the long term.</p><p>First of all, after an explanation of the differences between creativity and innovation, the creative process of high-tech firms in terms of actors involved, resources allocation, leadership and management of creative people will be depicted. Secondly, the creative destruction process and some of the inherent obstacles and risks of the creative process will be addressed. Thirdly, the concepts of Technology Life Cycle (TLC) and Product Life Cycle (PLC) will be developed.</p><p>Within this thesis, our ideas are presented and justified through three methodologies: Literature Review, case study and interview. We mainly used the cases of Hewlett-Packard (HP) and France Telecom Orange (FTO) to backup our argumentation.</p><p>We conceptualized the creative process and we highlighted the connections between the creative process and the Product Life Cycle. With the help of two other small cases study (Nintendo and Apple), we emphasized the downward trend of high-tech products’ lifecycle in the long run. Ultimately, four practical recommendations are given to leaders from high-tech industries and directions to deeper research this topic are advised.</p>

A Avaliação do Ciclo de Vida (ACV) é uma ferramenta da gestão ambiental que identifica aspectos ambientais e avalia os impactos ambientais de um produto ao longo de todo o seu ciclo de vida. O ciclo de vida considera todas as atividades que vão desde a extração e processamento das matérias-primas, manufatura, transporte, distribuição, uso, reuso, manutenção e disposição final. Através da ACV são obtidas todas as entradas de massa e energia e as respectivas saídas na forma de emissões atmosféricas, efluentes líquidos e resíduos sólidos para cada atividade que compõe o ciclo de vida do produto estudado. No desenvolvimento da ACV, durante a fase de coleta de dados existe uma enorme quantidade de informações que necessita ser coletada. Para sanar essa dificuldade, vêm sendo desenvolvidos bancos de dados de insumos de grande importância os quais possuem características regionais, tornando o estudo mais completo e confiável. A utilização de bancos de dados tem caráter apenas regional, visto que as condições técnicas e ambientais podem variar de uma região para outra. Dependendo da região, a utilização de bancos de dados internacionais tende a distorcer os resultados dos estudos de ACV, conduzindo a resultados não adequados, os quais não representam a realidade da região em estudo. Neste contexto, o Grupo de Prevenção da Poluição do Departamento de Engenharia Química da Escola Politécnica da USP tem desenvolvido estudos que visam à obtenção de Inventários do Ciclo de Vida (ICVs) para auxiliar na construção de um banco de dados brasileiro. O presente estudo, inserido nessa linha de pesquisa, visa à construção do inventário do ciclo de vida do biodiesel etílico do óleo de girassol produzido no Brasil. O biodiesel é um combustível renovável constituído de uma mistura de monoalquilésteres de ácidos graxos de cadeia longa, derivados de óleos vegetais, gorduras animais ou óleos residuais. Neste estudo, definiu-se o sistema de produto para o biodiesel, o qual dividiu-se em subsistemas para facilitar a coleta de dados. Os dados coletados para cada um dos subsistemas foram predominantemente secundários, isto é, obtidos de publicações científicas e bases de dados estrangeiras. No entanto, os dados secundários foram adaptados à realidade brasileira, por meio de informações e considerações que consideraram as condições tecnológicas e de mercado existentes no Brasil. Como resultado verificou-se que 8 dentre todas as etapas do ciclo de vida do biodiesel, a produção dos grãos de girassol é a que demanda mais recursos materiais e energéticos e que provoca a maior quantidade de emissões para o meio ambiente. Deste modo, na produção do biodiesel deve ser dada atenção especial para a produção da oleaginosa, buscando soluções quanto ao seu alto consumo de recursos e emissões para o meio ambiente. / The Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a tool of the environmental management which identifies environmental aspects and evaluates environmental impacts of products during its whole life cycle. The life cycle considers all the activities since the extraction and manufacture of the raw materials, transport, distribuction, use, reuse, maintenance and final disposal. Through the LCA are obtained all the inputs of mass and energy and the respective outputs of atmospheric emissions, liquid effluents and solid wastes for every activity of the product life cycle studied. In the development of the LCA, during the phase of data collection there is a vast quantity of information to be collected. To avoid this difficulty, have been in development databases of important inputs, who has regional characteristics, becoming the study more complete and reliable. The database utilization has only a regional character, since the technical and environmental conditions can change in different regions. Depending of the region, the utilization of international database tends to distort the results of an LCA study, leading non adequate results, which don´t represent the reality of the region in study. In this context, de Pollution Prevention Group (GP2) of the Chemical Engineering Department of Polytechnic School of USP have developed studies that aims to obtain Life Cycle Inventories (LCI) to assist the construction of a Brazilian database. The present study is inserted in such line of research and aims to the construction of the sunflower oil ethylic biodiesel LCI made in Brazil. The biodiesel is a renewable fuel, it is constituted of a mix of mono alkyl esters of long chain fatty acids derived of vegetable oils, animal fats or residual oils. In this study was defined the product system to biodiesel, which was divided in subsystems to assist the data collection. The data were collected for each one of the subsystems were in the majority secondary, obtained of scientific publications and foreign databases. However, the secondary data were adapted to the brazilian reality through informations and considerations that take into account the actual brazilian technological and market conditions. As a result it was verified that among all the steps of the biodiesel life cycle, the agricultural production of the sunflower is that one who demands more energetic and materials inputs and is responsible for the majority of the emissions to the environment. In this way, in the biodiesel production should 10 be given special attention to the agricultural production of the oilseed, searching for solutions to its high consumption of inputs and environmental emissions.

This research investigated using a life cycle environmental and economic approach to evaluate IX technology for small potable water systems, allowing for the identification and development of process and design improvements that reduce environmental impacts and costs. The main goals were to evaluate conventional IX in terms of life cycle environmental and economic sustainability, develop a method for improving designs of IX systems from a environmental and economic sustainability standpoint, evaluate potential design improvements, and make the research findings accessible to water professionals through user-friendly tools and frameworks that take into account their feedback. This research provides an understanding, from the perspective of life cycle environmental impacts and costs, of the tradeoffs between various reactor designs of IX, the effects of scale, key contributors to impact and cost, design trends that improve sustainability, and how combined cation anion exchange compares to conventional IX. Furthermore, tools were developed that can be used to identify design choices that improve sustainability of IX systems. These tools were made into a user-friendly format to better bridge the gap between research and practice.

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The delivery of innovative IT solutions that support business strategy is an increasing, growing competitive aspect of organisations in the financial sector. Previous research has shown the need to follow an innovative or a more agile and flexible methodology when delivering IT solutions to save cost and enable the solutions to reach the consumer market as soon as possible. To apply agile/innovative methodologies across large organisations requires more alternative approaches than to implement them in small enterprises. The organisation used in the case study, implemented an enterprise engineering innovative lifecycle (EEILC). Limited research has been done concerning the challenges and strategies during implementation of an EEILC. The purpose of this study was to investigate the strategies to overcome the challenges when implementing an EEILC. The research was inductive qualitative following an in-depth case study approach. The researcher conducted a case study using documentation analysis, informal interviews, in-depth interviews and observations with multiple stakeholders who are experts in their fields of software design and development. An inductive grounded theory approach was followed using a case study within an organisation in the financial sector in South Africa. Results show there are seven core category challenges when implementing an innovation life cycle. Each of these core challenges has a core enterprise strategy to address the challenges occurring in the applicable domain. The core challenges are: (1) innovation process challenges (addressed by an agile product delivery innovation strategy) (2) invention challenges (addressed by an idea management strategy) (3) business model challenges (addressed by a client’s value proposition strategy), (4) commercialization challenges, which include implementation and operations challenges, (addressed by a product portfolio management strategy), (5) culture challenges (addressed by an innovation culture strategy) and (6) knowledge management challenges and strategy, and (7) innovation management related challenges and strategy An innovation management strategy will manage all these challenges. Most prominent is the innovation management strategy which has links to all other categories in other domains. The relationship between enterprise client value proposition strategy show that enterprise client value proposition serves as a coherent link between how the innovation life cycle is adopted or changed to address the enterprise client value chain. This is driven by demand management to align between business and IT regarding the business model and application portfolio alignment. Thereafter, the alignment between the demand for enterprise application capabilities and the business service portfolio is shown. This is supported by service-oriented architecture (SOA) services. The resource management has to make sure the right resources, competencies and skills are available to deliver the product portfolio. During innovation and life-cycle's execution, there is a lot of interaction between individuals and teams. Therefore, communication and culture play a vital role to create synergies by collaboration of work practice and living the values of the organization. Through grounded theory analysis, a practical theory was developed, to show how challenges that occur during implementation of an innovation life-cycle, based upon enterprise engineering principles, can be addressed by best by putting the right strategies in place. This theory contributes to the body of knowledge by providing data and analysis from practical insight into how an innovation life cycle can be implemented. The challenges thereof and the mitigating strategies make it work. This study also suggested the key re best practices for enterprise architecture driving such an implementation. The research is an area of interest for development or customizing an Innovation Life-cycle using an Enterprise Engineering Framework.

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No description available.

The transport industry is in the middle of a conceptual shift driven by delivering the targets set by the Paris Agreement. Proactive heavy-duty vehicle companies seek to further gather knowledge in a structured way on environmental impacts of its products and services. The method to be implemented is Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). For implementation of LCA certain organisational and operational factors pre-requirements need to be addressed. The study takes key factors of Life Cycle Management (LCM) as a framework for assessing the readiness of Scania CV AB to implement LCA. Said key factors of LCM are analysed through company-based case study observations and literature review. The results indicate the company is in the process of introducing majority of the key factors of LCM. The case study tested the possibilities of the company for LCA, and attempted second phase of LCA, Life Cycle Inventory (LCI). The greatest challenge to LCA is low availability and format of data for LCA. However, the case study deeply tested the data limits and offers good insight in actions to be taken.