Internet of Things and BOM-Based Life Cycle Assessment of Energy-Saving and Emission-Reduction of Products

Energy-saving and emission-reduction (ESER), carbon footprint, carbon labeling, and carbon trading have attracted much attention recently due to severe environmental challenges. One key technology for implementing the above concepts is how to realize the effective quantitative evaluation of ESER. In this paper, the existing ESER evaluation technology and systems are summarized first. It is found that the existing ESER evaluation technology and systems are almost isolated from the existing enterprise information systems, such as enterprise resource planning (ERP), product data management (PDM), and customer relationship management (CRM), which results in the expanding of the enterprise information islands. In order to address this problem, a new method for ESER life cycle assessment (LCA) based on Internet of Things (IoT) and bill of material (BOM) is proposed in this paper. A four-layered structure (i.e., perception access layer, data layer, service layer, and application layer) ESER LCA system based on IoT and BOM is designed and presented, as well as the key technologies and the functions in each layer. A prototype application system is developed to validate the proposed method. The main contributions of the proposed method are: 1) facilitate real-time intelligent perception, and the collection of energy consumption and environmental impact data generated in the entire life cycle of manufacturing by using IoT technologies; and 2) realize effective data integration between the ESER evaluation system and the existing enterprise information systems based on BOM.