Processing scope/objectives/boundaries

Scoping and goal definition is often thought of as the most important process of an LCA, and care must be taken to establish appropriate boundaries that are consistent with the objectives of a study. Suh et al.102 warn that including a scientific basis for excluding and including processes in system boundaries is essential and emphasizes the difficulty in... 

At the outset, discussions on the study process were presented, so that the reader can develop the concept of objective and purpose. It is needless to state that for effective analysis, scope and boundary must be defined properly. 

Failure Modes and Effects Analysis. Failure modes and effects analysis (FMEA) is applied only to equipment. It is used to determine how equipment could fail, the effect of the failure, and the likelihood of failure. There are three steps in an FMEA (4) (7) define the purpose, objectives, and scope. Large processes are broken down into smaller systems such as feed or cooling. At first, the failures are only considered to affect the system. In a more general study, the effects on a plant-wide basis can be considered. (2) Define the problem and boundary conditions. This includes identifying the system to be studied, establishing the physical boundaries, and labeling the equipment with a unique identifier for use in the FMEA procedure. (3)... 

The P in SIPOC designates the process—the set of activities or tasks that transform inputs into outputs. To begin, identify the first and last tasks in the process, where it starts and stops. Specifying these steps helps to scope the project and clarify boundaries between the organization and its suppliers and customers. Next, identify the sequential steps between the first and last steps. Specify an action and an object in each box. 

The materials required are the zinc plates to be treated and zinc phosphate (Zn3(P04)2), which is the reagent necessary for chemical conversion treatment, and these items are reflected in the input data section of the inventory analysis. The system boundary is then set, representing the assessment scope of the LCA, and is determined based on its objective. Eor example, it may be necessary to consider whether to include the manufacturing processes involved in making the zinc plates from the original raw material, which is zinc ore, in the scope. 

Companies can define the scope and focus of the audit in terms of organizational, geographical, functional, and compliance contexts (National Safety Council 1997,102). These boundaries include departments within the organization, activities, and safety areas such as fire protection, industrial hygiene, and machine guarding. The audit instrument should provide the auditor with a thorough understanding of the scope of the audit process. This would ensure that areas that need to be addressed are not bypassed. The audit protocol is the auditor s plan to accomplish the objectives of the audit (National Safety Council 1997,107). The protocol provides the auditor with instructions on the locations to audit and the areas that should be addressed. Descriptions of the situations that indicate compliance and non-compliance with the audit protocol should be included with the audit items. 

The International Standard Organization (ISO 14040) [26] breaks the LCA framework into four main stages (1) Goal and scope definition of the study. This stage clarifies the purposes of carrying the study while the assumptions and system boundaries are described clearly. (2) Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) analysis. LCI involves data collection and calculation procedures to quantify relevant inputs and outputs of the entire system defined within the system boundaries. (3) Life cycle impact assessment involves qualifying the potential environmental impacts of the inventory analysis results. (4) The interpretation of the results from the previous phases of the study in relation to the objective of the study. This interpretation can be in form of conclusions and recommendations to decision-makers for process changes to deliver improvement in the environmentel performance. 

For PRE this implies the combination of several disciplines such as polymer chemistry, thermodynamics, characterization, modeling, safety, mechanics, physics, and process technology. PRE problems are often of a multi-scale and multifunctional nature to achieve a multi-objective goal. One particular feature of PRE is that the scope ranges from the micro scale on a molecular level up to the macro scale of complete industrial systems. PRE plays a crucial role in the transfer of information across the boundaries of different scale regions and to provide a comprehensive and coherent basis for the description of these processes [19]. 

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