Strategic Life Cycle Management (SLCM): Eco-innovation Strategies as a Response to the New Environmental Regulations on Cars in Europe

With the upcoming environmental regulations in Europe, car manufacturers are facing new strategic issues: how far should they get involved in the ELVs treatment and recycling? How to distribute the recycling targets among the 20 000 parts of the car? How to control the use of regulated substance over the whole vehicle? How to make technical decisions which make sense in the long run? To answer this specific question, a tool is proposed in this paper, the Strategic Life Cycle Management matrix (SLCM). SLCM is based on both a life cycle cost approach and an analysis of the maturity/readiness of the considered technology. Application examples are given to demonstrate how this tool is operational.