Distributed-Ledger-based sustainability assessment of production processes for medium-sized enterprises (Sustainable DLT)

Manufacturing small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that want to operate sustainably on the market face the challenge of having to assess the sustainability of their production without having access to specialized departments or sensor technology. The evaluation of sustainability therefore requires the cost-intensive involvement of external experts. Required information (life cycle inventories) of individual production processes can usually not be acquired. The associated costs are a serious problem, especially for SMEs. In addition, SMEs have less expertise in sustainability assessment than large corporations. Although numerous approaches to sustainability assessment already exist in science, SMEs face a major challenge in implementing these approaches in their own companies due to the lack of expertise.

The project objective is to enable SMEs to assess the sustainability of existing or planned production systems. To this end, an assessment model will be developed based on existing assessment approaches that will enable SMEs to assess the sustainability of their existing or planned production. In order to efficiently obtain the necessary input information for the assessment model, a decentralized data marketplace for life cycle inventories will be developed, through which companies can buy and sell life cycle inventories. The decentralized approach ensures traceability, objectivity and anti-falsification of the traded data and models. In this approach, the marketplace is operated by a cooperation network. The mechanisms underlying the participation of various stakeholders within the cooperation network are to be analyzed in order to derive business and incentive models within the cooperation network.