Life cycle assessments in small and medium-sized enterprises
We want to help SMEs, because ...
The law on corporate due diligence in supply chains is accompanied by a reporting obligation (ESG reporting). This was previously only mandatory for large companies, but from the 2025 balance sheet, companies with more than 250 employees will also have to provide evidence of where they stand and how they want to develop: They will have to add information on environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors to their annual reports. But it's not just their size that requires them to provide information; many SMEs are suppliers and are already confronted with the requirements from the supply chain - and they find it difficult. Life cycle assessments are complex to prepare, and DIN 14040 describes the procedure. And this is where we want to help with this project.
Our mission...
The "LCA4All" project aims to enable small and medium-sized manufacturing companies (SMEs) to determine the environmental footprint of their products within extensive supply chains and identify reduction potential. The core idea of the LCA4All project is to transfer the state of research on lifecycle assessment (LCA) into practice and to develop innovative LCA software for the needs-based implementation of LCA in SME supply chains and to test it in companies. In addition, a guideline for the pragmatic implementation of the LCA will be developed and validated in companies as transfer partners.
The project results ...
In the last third of our research project, we are realizing an interactive and AI-supported digital guide for the creation of LCAs for SMEs. Here is the link to the free use of a demo version at our partner company Valantic, even beyond the project duration. The research project ends on March 31, 2026, the project report is currently in preparation, an article has been published in the volume of the Ökobilanzwerkstatt 2025: here.
The LCA4All project ...
The research project ran from October 2024 to March 2026. It is a transfer project in cooperation between Ulm University of Applied Sciences and Valantic Supply Chain Excellence GmbH.
The project is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research and is part of the DATI initiative. The DATIpilot funding guideline promotes the transfer of knowledge from research to application, generates new solutions for social challenges and gains important insights for the promotion of innovation and transfer and the development of DATI.
Further information can be found on the project website lca4all.de.
