For companies, products are primarily bearers of profit; But the public increasingly see products as bearers of environmental burdens. Environmentally sound products are a sign of a company's internal improvement of environmental performance which can be shown to market partners. Design of (environmentally sound) products is a task for engineers. To fulfil this task, an appropriate tool is needed. The most frequendy discussed methodological tool for assessing and improving environmental soundness of products and production processes is life cycle assessment (LCA). In this article, LCA is described and classified; requirements which have to be met by LCA being applied in the above-mentioned context are derived and a specific technical framework is introduced which meets the requirements.