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The Institute for Polymer Testing and Polymer Science of the University of Stuttgart has been investigating automotive parts, structures and cars during their life cycle in plenty cooperation with the European automobile producers and their suppliers for the last 9 years. Therefore a holistic approach has been developed to combine tasks from technique, economic and environment in a methodology called Life Cycle Engineering (LCE). The goal is to find a way to support designer and engineers as well as police makers and public with this three-dimensional interrelated information to have the possibility to manufacture future products in a more sustainable way without loosing contact two the traditional parameters technique and costs.

Due to the fact that the requirements on the business environment of a company becomes more and more complex and dynamic, especially in the automotive industry driven by new regulations like the European car take back regulation (EU directive on end-of-life (EoL) vehicles) and product responsibility, effective tools and procedures along the complete product development process from research to design must be installed. Design for Recycling (DfR) and Design for Environment (DfE) tools can help to reduce the effort for environmental evaluation because of their direct integration in the designers workflow. As DFE is not standardized, it should be based on the reliable information, for example LCA data. A connection between LCA and DfE offers the possibility to integrate environmental evaluation with tolerable effort directly in the design process while keeping the transparency and reliability of LCA and fulfilling the legislative requirements for the end of life phase.

Life cycle assessment offers a suitable methodology to evaluate environmental impacts over the total life cycle of the car. Indeed the effort for LCA studies of complex products like cars is very high. Design for environment tools can help to reduce the effort for environmental evaluation because of their direct integration in the designers workflow. As DFE is not standardized, it should be based on the reliable data from LCA. A connection between LCA and DFE offers the possibility to integrate environmental evaluation with tolerable effort directly in the design process while keeping the transparency and reliability of LCA.