Seco enhances life cycle assessments with pilot project
Seco has high ambitions for its sustainability work. An ongoing pilot project is a crucial piece to strengthen the company's ability to map the environmental and climate impact of various products throughout their lifetime.
Seco's goal is to achieve operational net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2035. However, the company's customers and partners also have high ambitions and want to know the impact of Seco's products on the environment and climate. Conducting life cycle assessments will be a key tool to better understand how to effectively drive sustainable development of our products.
"We are now creating a structured way of working to better assess what in the products' life cycle most affects climate emissions and to provide our customers with better information to make sustainable choices," says Shaelyn Meyers, Sustainability and Environmental Specialist at Seco. "This is also important for driving our internal sustainability work and developing our products."
A project aimed at creating a model for life cycle assessments started in January 2024. The work is coordinated with other companies within Sandvik Machining Solutions, and the goal is to have an initial model ready by early 2025. "Seco has many products, and we can gather a lot of data, but it's important to manage it properly. We are creating a living model, which may not be 100% accurate from the start but will be updated as we improve our processes," Shaelyn continues. "We are starting on a small scale with a thesis and a pilot study, which among other things, clarifies what should be structured and what data is needed."
The pilot study has been conducted by Edward Hsuan-Wei Hsu, who is doing his thesis at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm, Sweden. He explains that the pilot project will lead to a more universal life cycle assessment across the entire Sandvik Group. "For the pilot, we have chosen one of Seco's products, a cemented carbide turning insert manufactured in Fagersta, Sweden, as a starting point to identify and address obstacles to conducting a life cycle analysis. The study lays the foundation for future implementation of analyses on all Seco's products."
An interesting result from the pilot study, published in June 2024, is that there appears to be an "environmental hotspot" at the supplier of the metal powder used in the insert. "Despite extensive processing at the factory, more than 80% of the environmental impact comes from the supplier of the cemented carbide powder. The study also points to the lack of accurate environmental data from the suppliers," Edward continues.
Edward has also identified some areas for improvement in the analysis method. "A crucial aspect is defining a functional unit, which serves a reference point for the overall environmental impact. This unit must take the machining performance of an insert into account, enabling a more fair and meaningful life cycle analysis from cradle to grave," he says. "Another important aspect is the allocation method, which allocates the impact to a single input. Since Seco's production often involves batches with mixed products, it is a challenge to divide the impact when looking at the whole. Further analysis of the relationship between the input's geometry and resource consumption in processes such as sintering is required."
Based on the pilot study, Seco will now continue to develop a model and expand it to include more products, starting in the fall of 2024. Pilot projects will also be initiated for more product areas. "We will not conduct life cycle assessments on all our products, but by analyzing our processes, we can find parameters that can be applied to individual products," says Shaelyn. "At the same time, we are in dialogue with representatives from all tooling areas throughout Seco to scale up the work. Additionally, we are collaborating with other Sandvik divisions, so we can build a common model. The goal is that our customers are able to search for sustainability as a parameter when choosing a product via MyPages by early 2025."
The work on the pilot study has gathered and engaged large parts of Seco. "We have received fantastic support from everyone within Seco, from production to product owners and R&D. It has been very helpful for us to understand processes and collect data, we could not have done it without them," says Shaelyn, and Edward agrees. "Since day one, it has been a pleasure to work with Seco. I have had the privilege to meet and talk to professional people and understand how they think about the project. It is a valuable experience for me," he concludes.
