LCA Leading to Total Quality Management TQM

1 Expanding the Role of Environmental Management to Incorporate Product LCA 

The term life-cycle framework is used broadly to refer to any and all of the tool and programs that provide insights into and to some extent quantify a company s extended environmental concerns (Sullivan and Ehrenfeld, 1994). It would therefore include all of the considerations we used above to evaluate solvents. These extended environmental concerns are associated with activities beyond as well as at the company s own production facilities, from raw material acquisition, to component production, to recycling or disposition of a product. This is a different way of expressing total quality management, or TQM. 

Environmentally conscious manufacturing (ECM) involves developing and implementing chemical processes that minimize or eliminate chemical waste, reduce scrap, or are operationally safer. The benefits include safer aud cleauer factories, reduced future costs for disposal and worker protection, reduced euviroumeutal aud health risks, improved product quality at lower cost, aud higher productivity (Weissmauu aud Sekutowski, 1994). 

ECM reduces the impact of mauufacturiug operatious. The critical point is that ECM, as an integral part of TQM, is the responsible and economically sound thing to do. It decreases costs and future liability and often improves the quality of the end product because of more efficient processes that generate less waste. It is a technology for the twenty-first century. 

Fundamental concerns about present LCA methodologies are that they are  

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