Eco Integral: Reference Model for Integrated Corporate Environmental Management

Initial Situation

Efficient environmental management requires the provision of comprehensive, valid and affordable information for decision-making. The use of the environmental management instruments, which are by now fully developed, can be promoted by the operational environmental management systems (German: betrieblichen Umweltinformationssysteme (BUIS)). Although this term is used for a long time, it has so far been mainly used for many mostly additive IT tools of different scope and complexity. Many of these tools, however, remained without an active connection to the existing business information systems and thus the provision of information for environmental management instruments was endangered.

Realization

Eco Integrals objective is to overcome these barriers. Through ongoing gathering, evaluating and documenting quantities, costs and environmental aspects of operational material and energy flows, information for all key environmental management purposes were made available. For that purpose, an implementation-enabled and cross-sector applicable reference model for business information systems has been developed.

Value

By applying the Eco Integral reference model, benefits are realized due to the integration

  • of large business application systems (especially materials management, production planning, production controlling and cost accounting) in a continuous concept;
  • of major environmental management tasks and tools into a consistent design;
  • of a powerful environmental cost accounting in the reference model.

Stakeholder

Scientific Partners

Technische Universität München, Chair for Information Systems (Prof. Dr. Krcmar)
Universität Hohenheim
Institut für Management und Umwelt (Institute for Management and Environment)
Wuppertal-Institut für Klima, Umwelt und Energie (Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy)

Business Partners

Kienbaum Consultants International

Research Funding

Deutsche Bundesstiftung Umwelt (1996-1998) (German Federal Foundation Environment)

Additional Information

More offers and projects were derived from Eco Integral, for example:

Contact

Prof. Dr. Helmut Krcmar