An integrated impact assessment and weighting methodology: Evaluation of the environmental consequences of lead-free solder alternatives

The focus of this paper is on the use of established management decision-making tools to address some of the limitations in implementing conventional life cycle assessment, for example, the evaluation and comparison of materials alternatives, the quantitative elicitation of stakeholderspsila preference structure as weighting factors, the simultaneous consideration of other economic and technological factors and the sensitivity analysis to examine the reliability of results. An integrated analytical approach, integrated industrial ecology function deployment (I2-EFD), previously developed by the authors, is designed to assess the environmental behavior of materials alternatives in correlation with their performance and economic characteristics. The assessment for lead-free solder alternatives is used in this paper as a more complex case study to further develop our methodology through the modification and integration of various quality management tools (e.g., quality function deployment, prioritization matrix), decision aid tools (e.g., analytical hierarchy process), and statistical methods (e.g., Monte-Carlo simulation).