Implementing sustainability in product portfolio development through digitalization and a game-based approach

The aim of this research is to explore if and how digitalization and a game-based approach can improve the usability and implementation of sustainable design methods and tools in a product development process. Based on semi-systematic literature review, advantages and limitations of digitalization and game-based approaches in this context were identified. A previously developed method that guides the implementation of a strategic sustainability perspective in product portfolio development, was then selected and elements of digitalization and game-based approaches were incorporated in its four building blocks: double-flow scenario modeling, sustainability assessment, market success assessment, and portfolio development. The resulting prototype of this method was further adapted after feedback gathered through expert interviews and then tested in workshops with industry and academia. It was found that digitalization was especially useful for the scenario simulation, data management, and automatic visualization of results, while the benefits of the game-based approach were enhanced motivation, collaboration, and co-design of results and solutions. At the same time, drawbacks were discovered, for example related to decreased transparency of how results are calculated, overuse of visualization and extrinsic rewards, leading to lack of clarity and trust in the results. In conclusion, there are synergies between digitalization and game-based approaches that can improve the usability of sustainable design methods and tools, but extensive testing is recommended to avoid pitfalls that can lead to opposite effects. Moreover, recommendations were identified for how to include digitalization and a game-based approach, for example, to enable integration with other tools, maintenance and constant update, to explore the benefits of team-based assessments and collaboration, to add diversity and customization, and to link the game to the user\u27s context, application, expectations and requirements

IMPLICATIONS OF EU INSTRUMENTS ON COMPANY CAPABILITIES TO DESIGN MORE SUSTAINABLE SOLUTIONS-PRODUCT ENVIRONMENTAL FOOTPRINT AND DIGITAL PRODUCT PASSPORT

In the EU, initiatives with concrete instruments for measuring and storing sustainability-related product data are now introduced in legislation. Based on literature review and semi-structured interviews, this study investigates two EU instruments, the Product Environmental Footprint method and Digital Product Passports, and their potential implications for company capabilities to design and select more sustainable solutions in a strategic way. The results show that these instruments can lead to increased transparency and traceability in the design and comparison of solutions, allowing for more effective collaboration across the value chain. By applying a strategic sustainability perspective, it was found that these EU instruments have major limitations as they lack a systems perspective, do not include a full socio-ecological sustainability perspective, and do not support strategic decision-making. This results in risks for suboptimization and the design of solutions that turn out to be costly dead-ends on the way towards a sustainable society. Research is therefore recommended to investigate how these instruments can facilitate a strategic development of sustainable solutions

Industry Trends to 2040

The engineering design community needs to development tools and methods now to support emerging technological and societal trends. While many forecasts exist for technological and societal changes, this paper reports on the findings of a workshop, which addressed trends in engineering design to 2040. The paper summarises the key findings from the six themes of the workshop: societal trends, ways of working, lifelong learning, technology, modelling and simulation and digitisation; and points to the challenge of understanding how these trends affect each othe

Digitalisation, sustainability and servitisation: Consequences on product development capabilities in manufacturing firms

This paper investigates the impact of the three mega-trends (1) digitalisation (2) sustainability and (3) servitisation on design and development capabilities in manufacturing companies. First, technological advancements have created both product opportunities, and new aids, captured in e.g. the Industry 4.0 paradigm, and intensively driving digitalisation of businesses, that, besides the technological challenges, cause new challenges and problem areas, such as information ownership and shared long-term responsibilities. Second, the need for sustainable solutions increases the focus on the design of circular, resource efficient and radically new technological solutions to be designed with a total life cycle perspective in mind, through use phase, repair and overhaul, until recycling and end-of-life. Third, and finally, the classical roles for suppliers, integrators and users are being changed as servitisation and Product-Service Systems (PSS) offerings affect both products and businesses, and ultimately entire value networks with new constellations of business partners contributing to the realization of solutions for customers.This paper builds on a conceptual literature review to identify relevant information about the three trends regarding their impact on design and societal development. In addition, a semi-structured interview study was conducted to investigate possibilities and challenges that four different types of manufacturing companies perceive today with respect to the mega-trends, and more specifically how these trends impact the design and development capabilities in the studied companies. Results from this empirical study show that digitalisation is viewed as an opportunity to find new solutions to meet customer needs and be competitive at the future market. Sustainable Product Development (SPD) was instead primarily to fulfil requirements and legislation. However, it was clear that some manufacturers start to see market forces as a driver. PSS can be seen as a means to create new solutions, often with digital tools as facilitator. Altogether, the literature study and the empirical data show that increasingly, designers are expected to design entire solutions, as opposed to merely artefacts. This implies that designers need to consider not only the product performance and cost, but products’ and solutions’ behaviour and impact over complete life cycles, developed and organized by business networks together with several suppliers and other partners with different capabilities. The basis for the designer is a technology mix comprising services, software, electronics and hardware, bundled into offerings in new business models, interlinked with new digital opportunities. Moreover, it is clear that the three trends do not represent stand-alone perspectives but affect one another in an intertwined way. To achieve long-term effects, the sustainability issues need to be integrated with many other subject areas, and implemented simultaneously as digital solutions, e.g. digital twins to physical artefacts are conceived, and value creating networks are being built up. Obviously, these three trends affect the need for change in product design capabilities and escalate the challenges of the integrated product development viewpoint, in a way that is difficult to master for individual engineers. Support for design and development work is needed that takes into account the mega-trends digitalisation, sustainability, and servitisation

A Foundation for Sustainable Product Development

Product development is a particularly critical intervention point for the transformation of society towards sustainability. Current socio-ecological impacts over product life-cycles are evidence that current practices are insufficient. The aim of this thesis is to form a foundation for sustainable product development through the integration of a sustainability perspective into product development procedures and processes. Literature reviews and theoretical considerations as well as interviews, questionnaires, observations, testing and action research through case studies in various companies have indicated gaps in current methodology and have guided the development of a new general Method for Sustainable Product Development (MSPD). This method combines a framework for strategic sustainable development based on backcasting from basic sustainability principles with a standard concurrent engineering development model. A modular system of guiding questions, derived by considering the sustainability principles and the product life-cycle, is the key feature. Initial testing indicates that this MSPD works well for identification of sustainability problems as well as for generation of possible solutions. However, these tests also indicate that there is sometimes a desire for a quick overview of the sustainability performance of a specific product category. This is to guide early strategic decisions before the more comprehensive and detailed work with the MSPD is undertaken, or, alternatively, when an overview is sufficient to make decisions. In response, a Template for Sustainable Product Development (TSPD) approach is presented as a supplement to the MSPD. To generate products that support sustainable development of society it is necessary to combine sustainability assessments with improvements of technical product properties. An introductory procedure for such sustainability-driven design optimization is suggested based on a case study. For maximum efficiency of a company in finding viable pathways towards sustainability, it is also necessary to coordinate different methods and tools that are useful for sustainable product development and integrate them into the overall decision-making processes at different levels in companies. To find gaps in the sustainability integration in a company’s decision system, an assessment approach is suggested based on case studies. A general conclusion from this research is that the support needed for making sustainability-related decisions are not systematically integrated in companies today. However, this thesis also indicates that it is possible to create generic methods and tools that aid the integration of sustainability aspects in companies’ strategic decision-making and product development. These methods and tools can be used to guide the prioritization of investments and technical optimization on the increasingly sustainability-driven market, thus providing a foundation for competitive sustainable product development

Company Risk Management in Light of the Sustainability Transition

Many of the most important business and economic risks are directly linked to environmental and social issues. This includes both threats and opportunities, not only in relation to reputation, which is often mentioned in this context, but, even more importantly, in relation to innovation capability and legislative change on inevitably more and more sustainability-driven markets. It is, however, unclear through which mechanisms such sustainability risks currently affect companies and how they can be systematically identified and managed. Based on the Framework for Strategic Sustainable Development, this study investigates the dynamics and implications of society’s sustainability transition from a company risk management perspective. In addition, exploratory and descriptive studies were conducted at two large product innovation companies to identify current risk management practices and preconditions for sustainability integration. The results reveal that a society moving closer towards a collapse of environmental and social systems leads to increasing sustainability-related threats for unsustainable businesses and increasing opportunities for sustainable businesses. Also, risk management is found to be a promising way for maneuvering in a smart zone between being too passive and being too pro-active in relation to sustainable innovation.The study participants at the case companies were knowledgeable about risk management in general but were largely unfamiliar with risks associated with sustainability and no processes or support tools exist to work systematically with such risks. Key steps to accomplishing an integration of a strategic sustainability perspective into risk management are proposed as: (i) identifying the effects of sustainability issues on internal and external stakeholder value; (ii) actively including sustainability in objective setting and cascading objectives across the levels of the organizational hierarchy; and (iii) developing concrete support for identifying, assessing, and managing economic sustainability risks. Thereby, companies can enhance their competitiveness while providing leadership in the sustainability transition.open accessSustainability Implementation Packag

Risk Management Practices in Product Development Companies

Product development (PD) is inherently linked to taking and managing risks. For risk management (RM) to be truly effective, it cannot be treated in product development in isolation. Instead, a holistic perspective is required that recognizes and leverages the communication and connections between RM sub-disciplines across the organizational hierarchy, including e.g. enterprise-, portfolio-, project-, and product RM. Therefore, the purpose of this study is (i) to investigate current RM practices on the strategic, tactical, and operational levels, and (ii) to increase the understanding of how RM sub-disciplines are connected and interact. To answer these questions, semi-structured interviews were conducted at two large multinational PD and manufacturing companies in Sweden. Also, based on previous research, a novel self-assessment tool was developed and tested to map areas of strength and identify improvement potential. The results show that RM processes are mostly formalized and systematic, but there is variation in the quality of performed RM activities. Qualitative support tools are dominating. The tools themselves are considered to be helpful, however, the challenge is to make people use them in value-adding ways. Other challenges and success factors include competence and awareness, culture, top-down demand for high quality RM activities and deliverables, a dedicated role with clear responsibility, and working early and continuously with RM. The importance of experience is stressed, however, no systematic way to work with lessons learned and knowledge sharing is in place at the companies. Risks are found to be primarily escalated bottom-up. The corresponding top-down flow constitutes of objectives, which ideally are cascaded all the way from company vision and strategy into product requirements. Through these findings, the contribution of this study is (i) providing detailed insight into current RM practices, not limited to the PD function, but considering a broader organizational context; and (ii) clarifying the role of goals and objectives for connecting RM on different levels

Sustainability Risk Management for Product Innovation

Social and environmental issues are directly connected to many of the most important risks that productdevelopment companies are facing. Based on literature review and interviews, this study investigatesrisk management practices on the strategic, tactical, and operational levels of companies. The findingsare used to identify preconditions for integrating sustainability into risk management processes andsupport tools. The results show that sustainability risks need to be connected to company objectivesthrough internal and external stakeholder value creation.open access</p