Adapting the ESSENZ Method to Assess Company-Specific Criticality Aspects

Abstract

In times of increasing awareness of limited resources, companies are becoming especially interested in criticality assessments. Based on the existing approaches of ESSENZ (integrated method to assess resource efficiency) and SCARCE (approach is to enhance the assessment of critical resource use at the country level), a method called CS-ESSENZ (company-specific ESSENZ) has been developed to measure the company-specific aspects of criticality and social impact in supply chains for abiotic resources. These comprise 20 categories and corresponding indicators, based on 19 ESSENZ and 25 SCARCE categories. Eleven of these indicators were modified, four were newly developed (e.g., economic importance), and the last five were applied as they are in ESSENZ or SCARCE. CS-ESSENZ was tested using the case study of a smartphone, demonstrating the method’s applicability as well as generating additional information on company-specific improvement potential. The results for supply risk showed that 29 out of 58 ESSENZ hotspots showed high, and 12 showed medium, improvement potential from the company perspective. CS-ESSENZ enables companies to obtain specific information on criticality and social aspects in their supply chains and points out areas for improvement, e.g., with respect to purchasing strategies for cobalt.

Enhancement of the ESSENZ Method and Application in a Case Study on Batteries

“…Hotspots identified by an assessment with ESSENZ+ should therefore always be checked upon correspondence with the specific supply chain of, for example, the conducting company. The CS-ESSENZ method, incorporating companyspecific information in the application, has been recently published [20], but it does not provide the sets of CFs extended by mine site certification and recyclates.…”

“…The ESSENZ results represent global averages [17]. Company specific efforts on risk reduction cannot be included [20].…”

“…Number 9 relates to the inherent shortcomings that cannot be tackled within the scope of ESSENZ. [20], but it comprehensively modified the original method, so that this enhancement does not build upon it. 2 Minor improvement outlined in the Supplementary Material (see Section S1).…”

“…The methodical approach of ESSENZ was not revised since its initial design, apart from further developments into CS-ESSENZ (company-specific ESSENZ) [20] and the SCARCE method (approach to enhance the assessment of critical resource use on a national level; hereinafter referred to as SCARCE) with a focus on the criticality assessment of regions [21,22].…”

“…Several shortcomings have been addressed in the literature concerning the methodical approach [17,19,20,22]. Moreover, limitations of ESSENZ have been revealed in practice.…”