Product Development Through Life Cycle Thinking
Samsung SDI pursues life cycle thinking in the whole process of designing environment-friendly products, which embodies product planning, development, and design phases. The process involves the concept of the environment on top of the existing steps regarding quality, cost, and delivery. Though Samsung SDI is not an end-product maker, it considers end-users’ product use and disposal when making products. To comply with RoHS, WEEE, and EuP, Samsung SDI established a course of internal work processes aligned with PDCA. Eco-design will apply to all Samsung SDI products. Additionally, Samsung SDI built a computing system that can automatically estimate Eco-profile in the mass production.
LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) is an assessment of a product's impact on the environment throughout its life cycle from collecting raw materials to recycling after disposal.
Samsung SDI collects environmental information on the energy used in the manufacturing process and components and then carries out LCA on parts in accordance with the principle of LCA stipulated in ISO 14040/44.
To assess environmental impacts of manufacturing processes, Samsung SDI uses BOM data from cost account system and energy/utility usage data from the integrated Energy & GHG System (s-GEMS). With waste emissions to air and water from the EMS system of SMIS, Samsung SDI can perform cradle-to-gate LCA.
While developing ecological products under the eco-product design procedure and regulations, Samsung SDI continually tries to improve eco-values of the products based on each evaluation item within three categories (hazardous material reduction, resource consumption reduction, and energy consumption reduction.)
Samsung SDI formulated SDI Eco-Efficiency index after analyzing the as-is level by product and has adopted it since 2008.
