Before you can model the environmental impact of your site, you need to add the products you produce and how much you produce. This article explains how to enter product and production data in Helix and what each field means, so your model is complete and ready for the next steps. This article covers the following questions:
Why is product and production data important, and what data is needed?
How to add product data?
How to add production data?
How to import product & production data?
Why is product and production data important, and what data is needed?
Entering product data is essential, as these products are the subject of your LCA and the items you will receive results for. To complete these pages, you need data on which and how many products you produce.
How to add product data?
Step 1. Navigate to the Products page.
Go to:
Under Input -> 3. Product -> 2. Products (Figure 1).
Figure 1: Navigating to the Product page in Helix
Step 2: Gather and complete the necessary information.
Add products by navigating to the product page, filling out the information (See Figure 2), and clicking “add product”. You need to fill out the product name, weight and unit; the rest is optional.
Figure 2: Standard product information fields in Helix.
What are the (optional) product fields?
What are the (optional) product fields?
Product name
Give your product a recognizable name. This name will be mentioned on all results exports (e.g., environmental profiles, Excel files) from Helix.
Note - When creating EPDs: You can choose a placeholder / internal name in Helix and use another one on your EPD, as long as this is transparently communicated to the verifier.
(Optional) Product name (EN)
This is the place for an (optional) alternative product name. For example, an English name (or any other language), an internal reference number, or even notes. In your product list, this shows up in brackets behind the main product name.
(Optional) Advanced
Checking the “Advanced” checkbox (optional) gives additional options to add information (Figure 3).
Figure 3: Advanced product information fields in Helix.
Internal reference, External reference, EANCE, EANHE, Description: These optional fields let you enter additional information, and you are free to use them in whatever manner suits your needs. You can use all, some, or none of these fields.
Note - Consistency: Aim for consistency in the type of information you enter in each field across products, as there is a column for each field in the Excel outputs (so you have similar information in the same column).
Volume and Sales Price: These optional properties can be used for allocating Usages & Emissions, via the custom allocation in process x product (Figure 4). To use one of these allocation methods, enter this information for all your products, respectively.
Figure 4: Preview from “5. Process x Product” - page (from custom distribution method).
(Optional) Properties
Properties help you allocate processes later on. For example, allocate processes to certain products or proportional to a numeric property.
You can enter any property name and unit that suits your needs. Assigning a default value makes it easier to assign properties only to certain products. The property will show up as a new column in your Helix export for the “Products” page. See the article on process allocation on how to allocate processes based on properties.
Property examples
Property examples
Example 1:
Imagine you want to assign a process (thus, the usages and emissions connected to this process) called “mixing black pigment” to black products (Figure 5). You can add a property “black” to all products, define it as a binary (Yes/No) variable, and give it a default value of 0 (signifying “No”). The property is added to all products in this account year.
You can now edit all products according to this property. If the product contains black pigment, you give the property the value of “1”(signifying “yes”).
Figure 5: Adding a property in Helix.
Example 2:
Alternatively, you could define this property as an amount, and add the amount of black pigment used to each product. Then you can allocate the pigment mixing process based on the actual amounts of black pigment used in each product.
Figure 6: Adding a property: example 2
Production year
Filled automatically based on the account year.
Product type
Only relevant when planning to publish results on the Ecochain platform for reuse by other/own company accounts.
Product unit & Weight per unit
This is your 'functional' or 'declared' unit - your LCA results are calculated PER PRODUCT UNIT.
The unit is a free entry field, you can choose whatever makes sense to you, but most common is to use:
“Unit” (with any variation in spelling or word, such as “piece”, “thing” or “cosa”(spanish for thing)).
Or a weight or measurement (e.g. kg, m, m2, m3) (spelling variations such as kilogram, KG, Kg).
Unit amount needs a numerical entry.
Note – Product weight: Always enter the product weight. It is essential for checking the mass balance in your LCA and is a common basis for allocating your Processes. Only omit product weight if you strictly allocate by production amounts and want results per product unit.
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Examples:
Examples:
If you want to see results per product unit, these fields could look like this:
Figure 7: Product unit & Weight - example 1
Or like this:
Figure 8: Product unit & Weight - example 2
If you want results per kg, it looks like this:
Figure 9: Product unit & Weight - example 3
How to add production data?
Step 1: Navigate to the Production page.
Navigate to the production tab (Input-> 3.Products -> 3.Production).
Step 2: Add production amounts per product.
Enter annual production amounts of your products.
The product weight you see here is taken over from the “Products” page, described above. The total production weight of each product in this year is shown.
Figure 10: Navigating to production-page and its outline
How to import product & production data?
For the material journey, importing data can save a lot of time. The section below outlines how to import data on each page of the material journey.
Importing products & production
To import ‘Products’ into Helix to set up your facility’s product portfolio, follow these steps:.
Go to the Input → 3. Product → 2.Products and export the import template (Figure 11) by clicking ‘’Export”.
Make sure to fill out the following columns (see green columns in Figure 11 below):
Product name (A): Name of your product (if desired, combine product code with the product name in this field).
Type (H): Product type. Generally use ‘Goods and services’ for each product.
UnitCount (I): Amount of product in the unit representing your functional unit. Recommended to keep as ‘1’ to reduce complexity.
Unit (J): Unit used to model your product.
Weight (K): Product weight.
WeightUnit (L): Unit for expressing the product weight.
Produced (M): Production amount for the product in the selected year.
You can use the other (optional) fields to add more details to your product models in Helix.
Once you have populated the file, import it into the page.
Before saving, review the changes to ensure it is correct.
Import failing: Troubleshooting steps
Import failing: Troubleshooting steps
If the product import fails or you receive a notification about ‘ignored lines’, check the following:
All required fields are completed correctly.
All headers are in the correct columns and start in column A (row 1).
The ‘Type’ column (H) contains exactly the value ‘Goods and services’.
The file does not contain formulas.
The file contains only one tab and includes only the necessary information for the import.
If the issue persists, contact your dedicated environmental specialist or our helpdesk for support.
For more context on how to import (product & production) data, you can read this article.
Figure 11: Excel import template of ‘Product’ Page.
Next steps
That’s it, you’ve added your product and production data! This forms the foundation for continuing the rest of your model in a structured and consistent way.
This is a crucial step - and allows you to in the next steps
This article was written in close collaboration with Lena Nickel:
