The purpose of this report is to evaluate the importance of collecting site-specific data for
the First Tier suppliers in a Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) study as compared to use data
from an LCI database and point out other highly polluting life-cycle stages where sitespecific
data should be collected. Data collection strategies will be analysed and
recommendations will be given for future Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) studies in SKF.
The case study of a specific bearing has been applied. The type of the product is
manufactured at one of SKF's factory.
As already mentioned, this report is focused on the suppliers of SKF that provide
products directly to SKF’s manufacturing facility, called First Tier suppliers. Due to time
and data quality limitations, site specific data were collected only for the main local First
Tier suppliers with the use of a data collection form developed specially for the purpose.
These data comprise information for the raw materials and energy inputs along with
waste and emissions outputs.
An analysis is performed to assess the qualitative and quantitative difference of using
"real" data collected from the First Tier suppliers in opposition to the LCI data of a
database. For this purpose, two simplified LCI models are established by using the GaBi
LCA software program. The first models site-specific data for the processes of the First
Tier suppliers and the second applies LCI data offered from the GaBi’s database. Then, a
thorough dominance analysis is conducted to indicate important life-cycle stages in the
bearing’s production that cause major environmental impact. The interpretation of the
results, in both cases, has been done by comparing the LCI results. Finally, the benefits
and drawbacks of the data collection strategy are realized after a comparison to the ISO
standard guidelines, other LCA studies and personal reflections.
This report indicates that the two different data sources (site-specific and GaBi data),
change evidently the LCI results for the total environmental load generated by the
bearing’s production. These changes fluctuate up to 30 % between the two models. They
are caused mainly by the quality and unavailability of inventory data in the database
used. The steel production and more specifically the steel billet (used for steel bars, the
raw material of rings) causes the highest environmental impact in the technical system of
the analysed bearing. Regarding the data collection strategy, it proved to be quite
efficient, reliable and transparent for the purpose of this study, since the most important
data for the First Tier suppliers have been collected and data gaps were of minor
importance to the results of the study.
Future LCA studies in SKF should focus on LCI data collection for processes that
influence signific...
