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Figure [above] shows how hazards, risks, and costs are considered together in an alternatives analysis.  A successful alternatives analysis should develop and evaluate several different approaches for solving the problem at hand.  The analysis should make conspicuous consideration of hazards, the sources of hazards, and opportunities to avoid hazards, thus ensuring a precautionary footing.  The risks presented by unavoidable hazards should be analyzed using conventional methods.  Decision analytic tools should be used to compare the resulting options and weight the relevant criteria.  The results of the analysis should be reported to the public in a manner that enables informed decision making by consumers while encouraging responsible innovation by industry.  The process should be ongoing and the analysis should be improved continuously.

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Since large-scale manufacturing processes are highly integrative, with each stage depending on the output from the prior stage, the functional requirements of a single manufacturing stage can be extremely specific and large changes can be disruptive to the manufacturing chain.  An analyst considering a single manufacturing process (limited scope) may have limited flexibility in selecting alternatives.  On the other hand, an analyst considering an entire product system (broad scope) may be able to envision a much wider array of alternatives. Figure [above] shows a generic product life cycle and compares the minimal scope for an alternatives analysis to the maximal scope, which is the entire product system.