3 Environmental Management Information Systems for Production and Recycling Lorenz M. Hilty Research Institute for Applied Knowledge Processing (FA W) P.O. Box 2060 D-89010 Ulm, Germany Phone: +49-731-501-8909 Fax: +49-731-501-999 Email: hilty@faw.uni-ulm.de Claus Rautenstrauch University of Magdeburg Department of Computer Science P.O. Box 4120 D-39016 Magdeburg, Germany +49-391-67-18800 +49-391-67-12020 rauten@ iti.cs. uni-magdeburg.de Abstract Environmental management information systems (EMIS) represent an important contribution for the support of environmental protection by companies. In this contribution a special fea- ture of EMIS will be focused on which supports the documentation and reduction of the con- siderable amounts of environmental damage caused by industrial production. A presentation of the foundations of EMIS and production-integrated environmental protection is followed by a discussion of concepts of computer-supported material flow management and recycling planning and management. Keywords Environmental management information systems, manufacturing planning and control, material flow management, production, recycling 1 ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT INFORMATION SYSTEMS The term Environmental Management Information Systems (EMIS) refers to organizational- technical systems for systematically obtaining, processing and making environmentally relevant information available in companies. Above all, these systems aid in determining the environmental damage caused by companies and designing support measures to avoid and reduce it (Hilty, Rautenstrauch, 1995). In contrast to general or supra-company environmental information systems, the tasks of EMIS are no.t confined to the environmental domain, rather are to be understood as building blocks for more complex management applications systems which serve company purposes. The starting point for the development of EMIS in past years was not only the increasing internal need for information -e.g., for taking into account legal regulations in the frame of company environmental protection -but also of the external demands made on companies for information about environmental damage caused by their products and production processes. Environmental SoFtware Systems Vol. 2 R. Denzer, D.A. Swayne & G. Schimak (Eds.) © IFIP 1997 Published by Chapman & Hall