In the picture below it is shown how you can navigate to the products tab.

You can create a product as follows (see picture below):

The picture below shows the bottom section of the ‘Products’ tab, which appears once your products have been added. Under the advanced settings (see picture above) it is also possible to enter the volume of a product and a sales price. In case these product characteristics are entered into the application, they are displayed in the ‘Volume’ and ‘Sales price’ columns.

To edit a product, click on the

icon. To remove products from the products page, click on the

icon.

On this page it is explained how you can enter products with Excel in your Ecochain company account. If you want to enter products manually, click here.

In the picture below it is shown how you can navigate to the products tab.

In order to add all your products using Excel, take the following steps:

The picture below shows the bottom section of the ‘Products’ tab, which appears once your products have been added. Under the advanced settings (see picture above) it is also possible to enter the volume of a product and a suggested price. In case these product characteristics are entered into the application, they are displayed in the ‘Volume’ and ‘Selected price’ columns.

To edit a product, click on the

icon. To remove products from the products page, click on the

icon.

It is important to realize that the Import/Export function adheres to strict formatting, without which the Ecochain Helix cannot process the data correctly. The easiest way to ensure that this is the case is to base the imported data on an exported format.

The Excel-format should:

On this page it is explained how you can enter production amounts into your Ecochain company account manually. If you want to enter production amounts using Excel, click here.

In the picture below it is shown how you can navigate to the production tab.

Enter the production amounts for the products that have been defined in the entering products step.

On this page it is explained how you can enter the composition of your products into your Ecochain company account (so link materials to products) manually. If you want to enter compositions of products using Excel, click here.

In the picture below it is shown how you can navigate to the compositions tab.

To enter the composition of different products click the ‘Add materials’ button.

A new window will appear, showing all the materials that have been added in the purchasing tab. In case materials are missing, you can add new materials.

Create the product composition as follows:

The total weight of the necessary materials may differ from the weight per unit as entered in the products tab. This could be caused by the difference between gross and net weights. Imagine the following situation: during the production process of a wooden chair cutting losses will occur. To produce the homogenous wooden chair, which weighs 5 kilograms, the production company has to purchase 8 kilograms of wood (gross weight). This means that the weight of the composition is 8 kilograms but the final (net) weight, as entered in the products tab, is 5 kilograms.

On this page it is explained how you can enter the composition of your products with Excel into your Ecochain company account (so link materials to products). If you want to enter compositions of products manually, click here.

In the picture below it is shown how you can navigate to the compositions tab.

In order to enter the compositions of all your products through Excel, take the following steps:

The picture below shows an example of the compositions tab after an import. In case all materials are green, the materials are linked to a reference activity from an actual supplier company or an LCA database such as Ecoinvent or the Nationale Milieu Database (NMD). Whenever this is not the case, like in the image below, this means that for these specific materials, no reference is selected from a supplier or database (yet). In order to connect an environmental impact to the materials you can click on the material, after which you are directed to the Purchasing tab, where you can select a reference.

The total weight of the necessary materials may differ from the weight per unit. Imagine the following scenario: during the production process of a wooden chair, cutting losses will occur. To produce the homogenous wooden chair, which weighs 5 kilograms, the production company has to purchase 8 kilograms of wood. This means that the weight of the composition is 8 kilograms but the final weight, as entered in the ‘Products’ tab (see step 5) is 5 kilograms.

It is important to realise that the Import/Export function adheres to strict formatting, without which the Ecochain application cannot process the data correctly. The easiest way to ensure that this is the case is to base the imported data on an exported format.

The Excel-format should:

On this page it is explained how you can allocate processes to products in your Ecochain company account. Use of Excel for the manual allocation is also explained.

In the picture below it is shown how you can navigate to the Process x Product tab.

During this step it is defined how much of each process is used in the production of each product. The picture below presents an example of such a distribution.

Under header ‘Distribution method’ it is possible to select how the distribution of process use to products should be implemented. Ecochain provides four different options:

The ‘by production weight’ option is recommended if your factory produces a variety of products that differ in weight, for example a factory producing wooden chairs and tables. The ‘by production amount’ option is recommended for factories that produce an output with the same weight per product, for example asphalt producers that sell ‘1 tonne of asphalt, which weighs 1 tonne’. The two other distribution methods are explained in more detail below.

The custom distribution option can be used when not all products make use of the same processes. Imagine the following situation: In a beer brewery malting is a step in the production process where germinated cereal grains (i.e. barley) have to be dried, to be used as an input for beers and stouts. The beer brewery does, however, also produce tequila-flavoured beers for which the malting process is not necessary. This means that the energy use of the malting process should only be allocated to the beers and stouts, and not to the tequila flavoured beers.

By simply using the ‘by production weight’ and ‘by production amount’ distribution methods, as outlined in the previous paragraph, the tequila flavoured beers would also make use of the malting process (and receive the environmental impact of the used energy). To avoid this, we can use the ‘Custom’ distribution option:

When using this custom setting, Ecochain recognises that only products with Barley in the product composition make use of the malting process. The result of this custom setting is displayed in the picture below. Now products that contain tequila (i.e. no barley) make ‘0’ use of the malting process. The number indicated for the ‘Light Beer Keg’ is a multiplication of the selected distribution criteria, which in itself has no meaning but is used by the application to calculate the total distribution of the processes for this particular product.

If the allocation of the processes to products is more complex than just allocating by mass or material composition, then using the "properties" feature of the products is recommended. Each product can have custom properties which are defined on the product page. Adding a property to a product in the section where you can create a new product will add it to all existing products with the default value.

To be able to use the properties for allocating processes, create a property to group the items that undergo a certain process or processes together. For example, add the binary property “Process 1”, with the default property of 0.

Then, set the products which undergo this process to the value of 1. This can be done by editing the product in the list of products, or by exporting the product list and adding the value to the newly created property line.

This way, all products that are undergoing the Process 1 will be in one group, and can be selected in the Process x Product page. When selected, the impacts will be allocated only to the products which have the selected property.

Additionally, the properties can be used to introduce numerical variables to account for different processing intensity.

For example, there can be a different processing time for different products. Let's say that Product A needs 5 minutes of heating, while Product B is heated for 30 minutes. Logically, product B uses more of the processing energy and therefore should have a larger allocation of that process.

This can be done by creating a “time” variable with the unit of “minutes”, and giving Product A and Product B the values of 5 and 30 respectively. When selecting the time property in the Process x Product custom impacts, impact will be distributed in proportion to the time variable.

It may also be possible that the amount of products that make use of a specific process is known. In order to enter the process use of all your products through Excel, take the following steps:

It is important to realise that the Import/Export function adheres to strict formatting, without which the Ecochain application cannot process the data correctly. The easiest way to ensure that this is the case is to base the imported data on an exported format.

The Excel-format should:

On this page you can find information on completing your LCAs and about checking your data for errors.

To finalize your LCA, you can simply press the recalculate button. Ecochain will calculate the results for you. Afterwards, you should review your data for errors.

This step is necessary to review your data for errors. In order to do so, navigate to ‘Done’ tab (Product > 6. Done) (see below):

Scroll down until you see the table that displays all the materials. This table compares the minimum amount of a materials that are needed according to the bill of materials (times production amounts) with the actual amount that is used (as indicated in the purchasing tab). In case these values differ per material, the extent of the difference is shown under the ‘adjustment’ header. Whenever you want that the table only depicts adjustments that are bigger than, for example 5%, it is possible to adjust the value in the ‘show adjustments bigger than or equal to’ menu.

The LCAs that are created with Ecochain are based on the actual amounts used. If the ‘amount needed’ and ‘amount used’ significantly differ, it is necessary to adjust the ‘purchasing’ tab. To adjust your data, take the following steps:

In case no mistakes were made in the purchasing tab, it is possible the compositions or production amounts have been entered incorrectly into the application. Before proceeding, please check whether the production amounts are entered correctly (Enter production amounts):

Or whether compositions are entered correctly (Enter compositions of products):

Recommended: Ecochain also provides the possibility to link the purchasing amounts to the entered amounts in the production and composition tabs. To calculate your LCAs based on the compositions and production amounts as entered in the application, take the following steps:

1) Navigate to the purchasing tab (Company > 3. Purchasing);

2) Click on the icon (see below);

3) Now, the purchased materials and amount of materials in the compositions are the same;

When you are finished with the data check, navigate to the ‘Done’ tab (Product > 6. Done). In case you made any changes during the data review, check the adjustments in the table on the review page (see below).