Product life cycle analysis (LCA): 4 stages and the data your plant needs

Product life cycle analysis helps you assess the potential environmental impact of a product across its entire life cycle or a defined part of it. If you are responsible for manufacturing, your first task is to determine what data needs to be prepared so that the assessment can be carried out reliably. This may include information on materials, processes, energy and utility consumption, transport, waste, product use and end of life. The exact scope of product life cycle analysis depends on the purpose of the study.

LCA, or Life Cycle Assessment, is a method for assessing potential environmental impacts associated with a product system. In this context, product life cycle assessment examines the environmental performance of a product system across defined life cycle stages. ISO 14040:2006 describes the principles and framework for LCA, while ISO 14044:2006 sets out the requirements and guidelines for conducting a study. The standards identify four interconnected phases: goal and scope definition, life cycle inventory (LCI), life cycle impact assessment (LCIA), and interpretation.

It is important to emphasize that these impacts are potential impacts. Product life cycle analysis does not directly measure environmental damage at a specific place and time. The model combines information on consumed resources, emissions, and other flows with a defined impact assessment method. This makes it possible to identify which materials, processes, or life cycle stages contribute the most to the result.

Not every study also needs to cover the path from raw material extraction all the way to the treatment of a used product. System boundaries depend on the purpose of the assessment. Sometimes product life cycle analysis covers the entire life cycle, while in other cases it ends at the factory gate or focuses only on a selected part of the process. For a manufacturing company, this leads to one key rule: product life cycle analysis should start with the decision it is meant to support, and only then move on to data collection.

You will need different data if you want to compare two materials, prepare information for a customer, or work on an EPD. The goal affects the system scope, the required level of detail, and the way results should be interpreted.

In product life cycle analysis, you also need to define the functional unit, meaning a quantified description of the function to which the results are related. One product unit is not always the right reference point. If you compare two solutions with different durability or performance, comparing the impact of one unit may lead to an incorrect interpretation.

More detailed rules can be found, among others, in the Product Environmental Footprint method. The European Commission Recommendation on PEF states that the functional unit should describe, among other things, the product’s function, its scope, the expected level of performance, and duration. The document also defines rules for system boundaries, data quality, and modelling.

PEF is not a synonym for every LCA analysis. It is a European Commission method that develops the rules for assessing a product’s environmental footprint and introduces its own, more detailed requirements. A well-defined product life cycle analysis immediately narrows down the scope of information that later needs to be obtained from production, purchasing, logistics, or measurement systems.

Product life cycle analysis follows four interconnected phases described in ISO 14040 and ISO 14044. During the study, you can return to earlier assumptions if the collected data shows that the scope needs to be adjusted.

You define the intended application of the assessment, the product system being studied, the functional unit, system boundaries, and the required level of detail. At this stage, you also decide which processes will be included in the model.

An inventory of inputs and outputs is created. In product life cycle analysis, you collect data on materials, energy, fuels, water, emissions, products, co-products, and waste generated in the processes covered by the study.

The flows inventoried in the LCI are assigned to the relevant impact categories and converted according to the selected assessment method. ISO defines the requirements for this phase but does not prescribe one calculation method for all studies.

The results are evaluated together with the assumptions, limitations, and data quality. You also need to check whether the conclusions actually address the purpose of the study and do not go beyond the scope of the model.

From a production director’s perspective, most of the work usually focuses on LCI. The company may already have the necessary information, but it may be stored in different systems and at different levels of detail.

There is no single input list that works for every product. A manufacturer of metal components, a food production plant, and a company producing electrical equipment will need different sets of information.

A good starting point for product life cycle analysis is to identify what physically enters the process being studied and what leaves it.

PEF identifies possible sources of company-specific data including process and plant measurements, bills, inventory records, purchasing information, and data on product composition, waste, and emissions.

If your biggest challenge is visibility into energy consumption at the process level, it is worth checking how an EMS energy management system works in manufacturing. It can combine energy data with production information and allocate consumption, for example, to a specific product or production order.

This is one of the most common difficulties when preparing product life cycle analysis. Your plant may know the monthly energy consumption of an entire production hall with high accuracy. But if several lines operate there and a dozen products are manufactured, the invoice total says very little about one specific product.

Example: one line produces two variants of a component. Variant A requires a longer cycle and additional heat treatment, while Variant B goes through a shorter process. Dividing the line’s total energy consumption by the number of units produced could assign both variants similar unit consumption, even though the actual process load is different.

For product life cycle analysis, a justified allocation method is therefore required. This may be direct measurement, machine operating time, number of cycles, production weight, or another metric that accurately reflects resource consumption.

The situation is similar with materials. The BOM describes product composition, but product life cycle analysis may also require data on material losses, waste, recipe changes, or actual raw material consumption.

If the identification of batches, components, and subsequent process stages is limited, a useful extension is our guide explaining how traceability works in manufacturing. A traceability system can connect a product with the materials used, the machine, process parameters, and production history.

Not all information has to come directly from your plant. The PEF methodology distinguishes, among other things, between company-specific data and secondary data. The latter may come from LCI databases, publications, statistics, or other datasets appropriate for the process being studied. PEF also specifies where company data is required or preferred within the model.

In product life cycle analysis, however, the fit of the source matters. A result describing a different technology, region, or period may poorly represent a current process carried out in a Polish plant. For important data, it is therefore worth recording at least four pieces of information: the source, year, geographical area, and allocation method used for the product. Documentation later helps distinguish a direct measurement from an approximation and makes the model easier to update. Product life cycle analysis can use secondary data, but its use should be transparent and consistent with the rules of the selected method.

These concepts are related, but they lead to different outputs. A product carbon footprint focuses on climate change. ISO 14067:2018 defines principles, requirements, and guidelines for quantifying the carbon footprint of a product using an LCA-based approach. The standard covers one impact category: climate change.

A full product life cycle analysis can include more environmental impact categories, depending on the goal and the chosen method.

An EPD, on the other hand, is an Environmental Product Declaration prepared according to the rules of a specific programme. In June 2026, ISO published the second edition of ISO 14025:2026, covering EPD programmes and environmental product declarations. The standard refers to the use of ISO 14040 and ISO 14044 when preparing a declaration.

If a customer asks for an LCA or product life cycle assessment, define what they expect as the output before starting the project: a full study, a PCF, an EPD, a PEF result, or a specific set of environmental information. This difference affects both the scope of work and the list of data required from the plant.

Product life cycle analysis should have one person responsible for coordination, but preparing the inputs usually requires several areas of the company. A process engineer or R&D team can confirm product composition and process flow; production can provide information about operations and volumes; the person responsible for energy or utilities can indicate the level of metering; logistics and purchasing can help gather transport and supplier information; and the environmental team will know the data on waste and emissions.

For product life cycle analysis, IT becomes necessary when information needs to be combined from several sources. Production order execution data may come from MES, product structure from ERP, process values from SCADA, and energy data from EMS.

If there are multiple sources, it is worth checking how an MES system organizes production data and how production reporting can work. What matters here is the ability to relate information to a machine, order, product, batch, or a specific process stage.

A manufacturing system does not perform the entire product LCA. However, it can provide some of the primary data later used by the person building the model.

The most useful first step is a data audit for one product that represents your production well. This is often the most practical way to prepare for product life cycle analysis without trying to map the entire plant at once.

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After this review, it usually becomes clear whether the biggest gap in product life cycle analysis is metering, product traceability, supplier data quality, or the lack of integration between existing systems. Product life cycle analysis becomes much easier when, before modelling begins, you know which data is available, at what level of detail, and who in the company is responsible for it.

No. ISO 14040 and ISO 14044 describe the principles and requirements for conducting LCA, but they do not themselves impose a general obligation on every manufacturer to perform such a study. A requirement may result from a specific programme, sector regulations, EPD preparation rules, or customer requirements.

ISO standards do not require a specific software package. Specialist tools help build the model, use LCI databases, and perform calculations, but they do not replace source data from production.

Yes, if the goal and rules of the study allow it. Some processes can be modelled using appropriate secondary data. However, their source, quality, and limitations must be documented.

No. LCA is a life cycle assessment method. An EPD is an Environmental Product Declaration prepared according to the rules of a specific programme and uses the results of an LCA in accordance with the relevant requirements.

If you are planning your first product life cycle analysis at a manufacturing plant, start with one representative product and a map of its data. Determine what you actually measure, what the available values refer to, and where the connection between the product and the process is missing. Only then decide whether you need to expand metering, organize traceability, integrate systems, or supplement the model with external data.