A production mix is a production-volume-weighted average of the suppliers of a specific product within a geographical area. This concept represents the aggregated supply characteristics of a product based on the actual market shares of different producers in that region.
In Life Cycle Assessment, the production mix is fundamental for modelling the average environmental profile of products where multiple suppliers exist within a defined geographical boundary. Rather than selecting a single supplier's data, the production mix combines data from all relevant suppliers, weighted according to their respective production volumes. This weighting ensures that larger producers have proportionally greater influence on the average profile than smaller ones, reflecting the reality of market supply.
The production mix approach is particularly important in consequential LCA when determining which technologies or suppliers will actually respond to changes in demand. By understanding the composition of current supply, practitioners can better identify the marginal suppliers most likely to adjust their production volumes in response to market changes.
ISO 14040 and ISO 14044 do not explicitly define production mix, but the concept aligns with the standards' principles for representative data collection and system boundary definition. When building Activity datasets, production mixes provide a systematic method for aggregating unit process data across multiple facilities or technologies producing the same Product.
It is important to distinguish between production mix and supply mix. Whilst production mix represents only the domestic production within a geographical area, the supply mix extends this concept to include imports, thereby representing the total supply available to consumers in that region.
