The sustainable design transition has proven to be a challenging process, in part due to the diverse set of stakeholders, which includes the general public, policymakers, scientific researchers, and businesses. In prior work, the interconnected relationships among systematic drivers and barriers for sustainable design were identified and mapped using a causal loop diagram at a relatively abstract level. To further understand and characterize this complex system, this research aims to identify the relationship strength levels among the variables in the system, as indicated by previous research identified in the literature. In addition, the knowledge maturity levels of these identified relationships are specified to illustrate strengths and gaps in the literature. The findings are used to create a refined system representation that illustrates the power dynamics between systemic driving forces to sustainable design transitions. The results of this work reveal valuable insights about the linkages among the driving forces of sustainable design transitions that can be used as a foundation for further investigation, such as experiments and data analytics that can better quantify these relationships. © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press.

This paper presents a prescriptive approach toward the integration of value and sustainability models in an automated decision support environment enabled by machine learning (ML). The approach allows the concurrent multidimensional analysis of design cases complementing mechanical simulation results with value and sustainability assessment. ML allows to deal with both qualitative and quantitative data and to create surrogate models for quicker design space exploration. The approach has been developed and preliminary implemented in collaboration with a major aerospace sub-system manufacturer.

The use of decision-making models in the early stages of the development of complex products and technologies is a well-established practice in industry. Engineers rely on well-established statistical and mathematical models to explore the feasible design space and make early decisions on future design configurations. At the same time, researchers in both value-driven design and sustainable product development areas have stressed the need to expand the design space exploration by encompassing value and sustainability-related considerations. A portfolio of methods and tools for decision support regarding value and sustainability integration has been proposed in literature, but very few have seen an integration in engineering practices. This paper proposes an approach, developed and tested in collaboration with an aerospace subsystem manufacturer, featuring the integration of value-driven design and sustainable product development models in the established practices for design space exploration. The proposed approach uses early simulation results as input for value and sustainability models, automatically computing value and sustainability criteria as an integral part of the design space exploration. Machine learning is applied to deal with the different levels of granularity and maturity of information among early simulations, value models, and sustainability models, as well as for the creation of reliable surrogate models for multidimensional design analysis. The paper describes the logic and rationale of the proposed approach and its application to the case of a turbine rear structure for commercial aircraft engines. Finally, the paper discusses the challenges of the approach implementation and highlights relevant research directions across the value-driven design, sustainable product development, and machine learning research fields.

In the aerospace industry, systems engineering practices have been exercised for years, as a way to turn high-level design objectives into concrete targets on system functionality (e.g. range, noise, and reliability). More difficult is to decompose and clarify sustainability implications in the same way and to compare them against performance-related capabilities already during preliminary design. This article addresses the problem of bringing the important—yet typically high level and complex—sustainability aspects into engineering practices. It proposes a novel integrated model-based method that provides a consistent way of addressing the well-known lack of generic and integrated ways of clarifying both cost and value consequences of sustainability in early phases. It further presents the development and implementation of such approach in two separate case studies conducted in collaboration with a major aero-engine sub-system manufacturer. The first case concerns the assessment of alternative business configurations to maintain scarce materials in closed loops, while the second one concerns the production technology of an aero-engine component. Eventually, this article highlights the learning generated by the development and implementation of these approaches and discusses opportunities for further development of model-based support.

Nowadays, when designing structural aero-engine components, the engineering team does not only deal with aerodynamics and structural mechanics criteria. Rather, it needs to make more informed decisions based on the value and sustainability contribution of a design concept. This paper proposes a novel approach that combines qualitative sustainability assessment techniques, which are Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and Strategic Sustainability Assessment (SSA), with Net Present Value (NPV) analysis to facilitate early stage decision-making in design. A case study, related to the development of a new high-temperature aero-engine component, illustrates how EIA and SSA identify sustainability hotspots for a new product technology, and how NPV is used to assess alternative solution strategies within the hotspot. Within the studied case, the milling process was identified as a sustainability hotspot, therefore two process options - Electro-Chemical Milling (ECM) and Mechanical Milling (MM) - where benchmarked by calculating their NPV in alternative future scenarios, featuring different market and regulatory assumptions. The approach and its constituting models have been preliminarily verified with designers and process owners in co-located industrial workshops.

Current patterns of production and consumption need to change and they need to do so radically. For this shift sustainability-oriented product-services are highly potential contributors. Product-services have been described as a market proposition that extends the functionality of a product beyond the traditional view by inclusion of additional services into the product-service system. From a producer perspective this opens up for a differentiation from competitors and thereby for strategic market opportunities. For the customer this means the possibility to be released from responsibilities linked to asset ownership, more differentiated options and increased function availability .For society at large it means the possibility to gain sustainability achievements. However, the market adoption of product-services or functional products brings with it significant challenges. The demand side is still hesitant to ownerless consumption and the supply side faces economical and company culture-related challenges. The challenges also include customer-related challenges and the development of product-services will require joint efforts of a number of actors along the value chain, actors that traditionally have been outside the buyer-seller relationship. Product-services need to be developed on a case-by-case basis and involve the users perspective from initial need phase until end-of-life in a collaborative process that is not practice today. This paper explores the strategic position of a procurer in this development. It aims at providing guidelines for procurement processes on how to successively and systematically utilize its potential as drivers for sustainability-oriented product-service solutions. Three procurement cases are studied for which a movement from a traditional product-oriented process to a functional-oriented process was the selection criteria. These cases were used to gain a deepened understanding of drivers and barriers for function-oriented procurement processes. A template for sustainable product development is used as a base for the development. The result from the cases is used to adapt the guidelines to current procurement processes and to meet the procurers where they are today.

To turn current patterns of consumption and production in a sustainable direction, solid and understandable market information on the socio-ecological performance of products is needed. Eco-labelling programmes have an important role in this communication. The aim of this study is to investigate what gaps there may be in the current criteria development processes in relation to a strategic sustainability perspective and develop recommendations on how such presumptive gaps could be bridged. First a previously published generic framework for strategic sustainable development is described and applied for the assessment of two eco-labelling programmes. Data for the assessment is collected from literature and in semi-structured interviews and discussions with eco-labelling experts. The assessment revealed that the programmes lack both an operational definition of sustainability, and a statement of objectives to direct and drive the criteria development processes. Consequently they also lack guidelines for how product category criteria might gradually develop in any direction. The selected criteria mainly reflect the current reality based on a selection of negative impacts in ecosystems, but how this selection, or prioritization, is made is not clearly presented. Finally, there are no guidelines to ensure that the criteria developers represent a broad enough competence to embrace all essential sustainability aspects. In conclusion the results point at deficiencies in theory, process and practice of eco-labelling, which hampers cohesiveness, transparency and comprehension. And it hampers predictability, as producers get no support in foreseeing how coming revisions of criteria will develop. This represents a lost opportunity for strategic sustainable development. It is suggested that these problems could be avoided by informing the criteria development process by a framework for strategic sustainable development, based on backcasting from basic sustainability principles.

Green public procurement has emerged as a policy instrument with a significant potential to steer procurers' and producers' decisions in a sustainable direction. The purpose of this study is to assess the process for development of green public procurement criteria at a Swedish governmental expert body from a strategic sustainability perspective, i.e. to identify strengths and weaknesses from such a perspective as a basis for making this process more supportive of sustainable product and service innovation. A previously published framework for strategic sustainable development is used for the assessment. The assessment shows that the criteria development process is transparent, well-documented and that it encourages a high level of participation by the members of the working groups. However, the assessment also points to several weaknesses of the process. These include, e.g., a limited impact perspective and lack of a clear definition of sustainability objectives. The development process therefore results in criteria which mainly concern a selection of current environmental impacts outside the context of long-term objectives and consequently there are no strategies to prepare for future processes. The conclusion is that the current process may result in improvements as regards some known environmental problems, but to allow for a strategic approach that could more significantly promote innovative product-service system solutions in support of sustainable development, process changes are needed. Essential process changes are proposed in this paper.

The key role of engineers for the transformation of society towards sustainability is a strong motivation for increasing the environmental knowledge within engineering education. Doing this by the concept of integration is presently considered more appropriate than to develop more new education programmes for environmental specialists. This paper describes the integration of environmental aspects into a mechanical engineering education programme. The Natural Step Framework has been used as a basis for this integration. It has been possible to include environmental knowledge without compromising the engineering quality of the programme.

Integration of sustainability aspects into the product development process has been difficult to achieve, especially for small and medium-sized enterprises. The main reason is that existing tools are experienced to be too detailed and as a result too demanding in terms of time and resources. This Licentiate Thesis presents a method for sustainable product development (MSPD). The method is intended to be a complement to existing overarching sustainability management tools and detailed quantitative product analysis tools. The objectives of the MSPD are: (i) identification of potential problems of present or planned products caused by substances and activities during the product life cycle that are critical with regard to principles for sustainability; (ii) guidance in finding solutions to the potential problems by modifications of present or planned products, and (iii) promotion of new products and business ideas based on sustainability aspects. A method suitable for most enterprises, irrespective of product type or background knowledge, has been sought. The MSPD includes: (1) a management tool which supports the user with information about, and instructions for applying, the method; (2) a flexible model for an integrated product development process, including checklist questions concerning traditional aspects of product development; (3) a modular system of guiding questions concerning aspects of sustainability, and (4) a prioritisation matrix for evaluation and choice of proposals in each product development phase. A MSPD prototype has been developed and tested in six small and medium- sized enterprises to study the usability of the basic structure of the method, and to obtain ideas for improvements and further development.

Small- and Medium sized Enterprises (SMEs) represent a large part of industry. Environmental considerations during product development in SMEs therefore imply a large potential for reducing society's environmental impact. Implementing environmentally adapted product development among SMEs has been considered difficult and is uncommon. Our approach is to develop a qualitative Method for Sustainable Product Development (MSPD) that relates both to a framework for sustainability and to the ordinary product development process. The aim is to guide the user to avoid problems related to social and ecological non-sustainability without demanding extensive expertise knowledge. Two surveys in ten Swedish SMEs have been carried out. An initial survey registered their product development procedures and environmental work as well as desired characteristics of a new suggested method for integrating environmental aspects into the product development process. A second survey registered additional desired characteristics and improvement suggestions when testing an early version of our MSPD. The surveys and the structure of our MSPD are presented, and the desired characteristics for a workable method in SMEs, found in our investigation and in literature, are discussed.

A qualitative Method for Sustainable Product Development (MSPD) is presented. It consists of three tools: an Integrated Product Development Model (IPDM), a strategic planning process based on backcasting (ABCD-analysis), and a matrix containing hierarchically ordered and guiding questions. This Sustainability Product Analysis (SPA) matrix has conditions for sustainability along one axis and the life cycle of the product along the other axis. The SPA-matrix is used in the ABCD-analysis, which in turn is used in the IPDM. Integrating the tools in this way and using overall conditions for sustainability is unique compared to many other tools and methods for design for the environment. The MSPD is being developed in discussions with ten small- and medium sized enterprises.

In this paper, we present a Method for Sustainable Product Development (MSPD) with the aim of integrating social and ecological aspects of sustainability with a strategic business perspective in product development. The method applies backcasting from basic principles for sustainability, which allows a strategic approach, and it includes a modular system of guiding questions that are derived by considering these principles and the product life cycle. Initial testing in Swedish companies indicates that the suggested MSPD promotes a ‘bird’s eye’ perspective and encourage and aid development of products that support society’s transformation towards sustainability. Furthermore, it is concluded that the modular system provides flexibility and user-friendliness.

Trade-off situations often occur in the product development and procurement processes when alternative solutions emphasize different aspects that have to be balanced against each other. Ecodesign tools can be used in both product development and purchasing, for example to prescribe design alternatives, assess environmental impacts or to compare environmental improvement alternatives. However, it is not always clear what should be chosen in trade-off situations. In this study, fifteen different Ecodesign tools were analyzed to ascertain whether a valuation is included in the tools, in what way the tools give support in different types of trade-off situations and whether the tools give support from a sustainability perspective. Nine of the fifteen tools analyzed included a valuation and were able to give support in a trade-off situation, but the support was not sufficient. The valuation should include a lifecycle perspective and a framework for sustainability. Otherwise it can lead to strategically incorrect decisions from a sustainability perspective with concomitant risks of sub-optimized investment paths and blind alleys. However, all the analyzed tools can be complemented with other tools and methods based on strategic planning towards sustainability in order to include a framework for sustainability.

In response to the increasingly competitive global market, there is a growing interest in design optimization. Being able to include aspects of socio-ecological sustainability in product design should aid companies to both improve current competitiveness and to identify viable long-term investment paths and new business opportunities in the evolving sustainability-driven market. A case study of a water jet cutting machine is used to illustrate a new iterative optimization procedure that combines a technical assessment with a sustainability assessment. Sustainability assessment methods/tools are first used to identify prominent sustainability problems from present-day flows and practices (“societal indicators”) and to generate ideas of long-term solutions and visions. Based on this, preliminary ideas about likely desirable changes in machine properties are obtained. Technical investigations are then performed to assess if/how these particularly desirable changes in machine properties could in principle be realized through changes in design variables. After that, obtainable changes are fed back to a new and more refined sustainability assessment to find out the societal implications of these changes. This may in turn result in other desirable design changes, which may call for a new and more refined technical assessment, etcetera. The experience from the case study indicates that the suggested integrated and iterative working procedure should be able to add information about socio-ecological impacts of product properties and influence design criteria used in prioritisation situations during product development.

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 other

Sustainable design methods and tools abound, but their implementation in practice remains marginal. This article brings together results from previous literature reviews and analyses of sustainable design methods and tools, as well as input from design researchers and professional practitioners to identify the needs and gaps in the area. It results in a shared vision of how sustainable design methods and tools can be more tightly integrated into mainstream product design and development, as well as the current state of practice and research in relation to four central questions: What are the needs and values of industry regarding sustainable design? What improvements in sustainable design methods and tools would most drive industry forward? How should researchers move forwardwith developingmore useful sustainable designmethods and tools? Howcan sustainable design be more effectively integrated into industry? A roadmap for the international sustainable design research community is proposed with descriptions of short-, medium-, and long-term tasks for addressing each question. The purpose is to support collective progress and discussions on method and tool development and adoption, and to enablemore tangible success inmainstreaming sustainable design practices in industry. © 2020 by the authors.

Sustainability integration in core business and product development has been a challenge, even if many supporting methods, tools and concepts are available today. However, these are mainly focusing on specific environmental aspects and are often failing to serve companies in integrating sustainability thinking into their strategic decision processes, and consequently into their core business and product development. In this study a previous proposal for an approach to assessing the current state of sustainability integration in company decision systems was used at two case companies, ABB High Voltage Cables and Hammarplast AB. The purpose was to develop this approach further so that it can better assist decision makers (when initial assessment points to such gaps) to integrate sustainability thinking into the strategic decision processes, i.e. align vision, management system and tools to help prioritize actions in a backcasting plan for a sustainable company within a sustainable society. The developed approach includes a SWOT analysis supported strategic capability assessment, and genericguidelines for how to identify appropriate targets, which can also serve as a basis for development of indicators – all informed by a framework for strategic sustainable 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.

 In order for a company to define a sustainability design space and become more sustainable it must know: what sustainability means; how sustainability can be achieved; and, how sustainability can be measured. 

The main contribution of this paper is an approach to define the design space for sustainability, with purpose to give support in the early product innovation process. A novel approach is presented for how to identify strategic sustainability criteria, tactical design guidelines and sustainability compliance index that are important parts of a sustainability design space. A case company within the aerospace industry has been chosen to test and validate the sustainability criteria and how it can give support in evaluating the current sustainability profile of a product component by using the suggested Sustainability Compliance Index (SCI). 

The result from company feedback and early pilot-testing showed that the sustainability criteria and sustainability compliance index can give support in decisions regarding sustainability perspective in early concept development. The pilot-tests also indicated that there is a need for further development and validation.

Sustainability criteria used for decision support in the product innovation process and aligned throughout the design process is one key element to efficiently introduce a sustainability perspective early in product development. The aim of this paper is to present an approach for identifying such sustainability criteria and to suggest a process for how these can be developed in any manufacturing company. The sustainability criteria are presented in a set of matrices, separating the criteria into product life-cycle phases and socio-ecological sustainability principles. In addition the paper presents a qualitative measurement scale for the criteria, called a sustainability compliance index that indicates to what degree a product or process concept performs in relation to a sustainable solution. The sustainability criteria were tested in different settings at a case company within the aerospace industry to give a first indication and evaluation of the ability to give guidance and support in bringing in a sustainability perspective when developing, evaluating and selecting different concepts in the early phases of product development.

In spite of the growing awareness and significance of accounting for sustainability aspects in product development, design decision support is still immature in this end compared to other decision support areas, such as product performance and manufacturability. This paper proposes a novel decision support method that combines qualitative sustainability assessment techniques with a quantitative analysis, without losing transparency and still covering a full sustainability perspective. The aim is to contribute to an understanding for how to enable value assessment of sustainability issues already in early product development situations. The method, named Sustainability Assessment and Value Evaluation, combines two qualitative sustainability assessment techniques with a quantitative Net Present Value analysis based on alternative future scenarios. A case study, related to the development of a new high-temperature aero-engine component, illustrates both how the sustainability assessment identifies hotspots and clarifies potential sustainability consequences for a new product technology, and how Net Present Value is used to assess alternative solution strategies based on the hotspot, to facilitate early stage decision-making in design. The paper argues that the method serves two main purposes: i) to make sustainability consequences more concrete and understandable during design concept selection activities, rather than to have an exact measurement, and ii) to simplify and prioritize, systematically asking what is important in the sustainability analysis, rather than to reduce the sustainability problem. The method allows undertaking the sustainability assessment in a more structured way than what happens today in preliminary design, through scenario building based on socio-ecological assessments, including back-casting to cover the longer time perspective. In addition, the Sustainability Assessment and Value Evaluation-method provided the design team of a means for displaying sustainability consequences on an equal basis with other decision support tool results.

In the conceptual design of aircraft jet engine components, not only the product architecture and dimensions are set but the associate manufacturing processes are also defined. From a design decision point of view it is critical to identify and characterize the consequences of alternative solutions. This paper reports on a case, where a milling process needed to be selected in an early design phase of a jet engine component. An Electro-Chemical Milling process was considered but its impact on sustainability needed clarification. An approach that combined a simplified Environmental Impact Assessment with a Strategic Sustainability Assessment was used. The main finding and contribution from the work is a method that helps to clarify consequences of sustainability-related issues by combining the two analysis tools with a risk analysis implementation. The results reveal that once the consequences can be clarified, increased attention and understanding are gained.

Improving structural performance of products is often realized by introducing increasingly advanced and complex materials as well as material combinations. What material to use in products is decided in the early product development phases and has a decisive impact for manufacturing, maintenance and end-of-life. A particular challenge is that the decisions need to be made upfront, where information of the forthcoming product is limited. This paper presents an early product development method to assess the criticality of alloy materials from a resource availability- and sustainability perspective. The method distinguishes itself from previous studies that focus on element criticality on a country level. The method is used to characterize and analyze the criticality of alloys in a three-step process that aims to support product design teams selecting what material alloy to use in early phases of design. It provides a proactive and systematic approach related to critical materials to avoid potential future problems on a long-term basis. The method presented has been developed in an action research-based approach in an aerospace company where a product design team validated and evaluated the material criticality method. The generic nature of the method is likely to be applicable not only to aerospace companies but also to other industries using advanced alloys. An important finding from applying the method in the company case was the clear link between long term business impact and sustainability performance. © 2017 Elsevier Ltd

A radical shift in technology is necessary to enable future air transport solutions. Sustainability targets for aeroengine manufacturing mean more than reducing CO2 and NOX. The future will open up possibilities and bring new challenges when introducing hybrid- and electrical propulsion technologies using new materials, technology solutions and new business models. This article reports on findings from a longitudinal study and many years of collaboration between researchers and industry experts, where a first-tier aeroengine manufacturer transforms their product development capabilities to enable sustainable product development. The article highlights some activities undertaken and identifies critical challenges and opportunities remaining for a manufacturer of next-generation aeroengine solutions. It is argued that the challenge for aeroengine manufacturers to develop new-generation propulsive technologies will require a systemic change in the undertaking of design and development. The opportunities of sustainable technologies are evident yet require: (1) means to tighter integrate business and technology development, (2) the ability to quantify and assess sustainability impacts of different concept solutions, and (3) means to utilise natural resources, alloys and materials for a circular and life-cycle optimised solution.

Apparent from the latest pandemic, the dynamics and rate of change in society accelerate on a global scale. Ongoing mega-trends in society, such as digitalization, sustainability, and servitization, fundamentally changes the conditions for manufacturers when developing and providing new products. This study clarifies the combined impact and consequences on product development capabilities in manufacturing firms of the three mega-trends: (i) digitalization, (ii) sustainability, and (iii) servitization. The research is based on a pre-study, complemented with a semi-structured interview study at small, medium-sized, and large Swedish-based manufacturing companies, and a systematic literature review. The research makes evident that the main challenge is to empower engineers and development teams to model, present, evaluate, and develop expected and smart digitalized solutions in a time-limited environment and prioritize the most resource efficient and sustainable solution. Therefore, four complementary support resources are suggested: (i) a knowledge management platform, (ii) a data management platform, (iii) a set of criteria and metrics measuring progression, and (iv) support methods and tools to define, model, and evaluate solutions. When integrated into a digital platform, developers can simultaneously access and process the necessary information needed for sustainable, digitalized, and servitized solutions. © 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.

Sustainability has shifted from strategically important to business critical for several manufacturing industries. This paper introduces an implementation framework to increase the capabilities in companies to design, develop and offer sustainable product- and production solutions in line with new regulatory strategies and plans. Based on a questionnaire survey, conducted in ten different product development companies representing different industrial sectors, the status and needs of sustainable product development were captured. Further on, a better understanding of the capabilities for a forthcoming digital sustainable product development support, were identified in an action research-based approach with three industrial companies. This paper presents the rational of a digital sustainable product development support, in relation to global sustainability goals and societal dimensions of sustainability transitions. The main results from the questionnaire presents the challenges and needs of capabilities for product developers and design engineers to develop more sustainable solutions in a resource efficient way. The action-based research with the three industrial manufacturing partners resulted in a set of common key activities and detailed requirements for a digital sustainable product development support. Finally, the paper describes a first prototype of a digital platform, i.e. Digital Sustainability Implementation Package-DSIP, and discusses future work. © Proceedings of NordDesign 2022: How Product and Manufacturing Design Enable Sustainable Companies and Societies.

This article aims to explore a new approach to assess company decision systems regarding sustainability-related communication and decision support between senior management and product development levels. The assessment approach was developed in theory and its applicability was directly tested in action research in two small and medium-sized companies and two large companies. The results were validated against experiences made by two management consultancies. Our study indicates that successful companies should: (i) integrate sustainability into business goals and plans, backed up by suitable (ii) internal incentives and disincentives and (iii) decision support tools. Our study also indicates that the new assessment approach can be used as a template to assess the current state of sustainability integration in company decision systems.

Industry is a main stakeholder when it comes to realising the transition towards a sustainable future. Academia, with its, knowledge and methods, needs to support the industry on this journey. This paper, focuses on the practical learnings on how to implement sustainability research from an industrial perspective. It aims to share some lessons learnt from a longitudinal case study and a development journey in implementing sustainability research in the product innovation process at GKN Aerospace Engine System. The paper gives an overview, based on a literature study, of what is required to successfully implement sustainability in product development. It also provides a summary of the different research projects at the company with learnings from practical and academic perspectives, and the main learnings and changes in relation to different development phases in the sustainability journey. Although, this journey began over ten years ago, and shows the importance of long-term collaboration, it provides key-factors that can be applied also in short term collaborations and for faster implementation of research in general and sustainable product development research in particular.

In this paper, an approach to systematically include sustainability into the Technology Readiness Levels (TRL) is proposed. The aim is to answer the question "how can sustainability provide systematic guidance in technology development and early product development?". Results from a case study illustrate that the suggested approach can support i) the inclusion of sustainability into the early design stages, when only limited data and information is available; ii) the enhancement of the comprehensiveness of sustainability and ease of use in the day-to-day engineering working environment; and iii) simplified sustainability assessments without being too simplistic and/or reducing the sustainability scope. The proposed approach is being co-developed in collaboration with a case company, and tests on an actual technology development project are planned. The next steps are related to the application of the proposed approach in other companies to test its robustness and enhance its generalization for application in diverse contexts.

The results of unsustainable product innovation are evident worldwide. Products and their usage contribute to global sustainability problems. Companies building competence in innovation for sustainability will therefore gain competitive advantages in the evolving sustainability-driven market at the same time as sustainability is a driving force for innovation. Blekinge Institute of Technology (BTH) has a research group that brings together competences with the unifying purpose of supporting industrial capacity for sustainable product-service system innovation. From this research, it is evident that there is a need for systems innovators who can help create leap frog solutions as well as make sure that incremental improvements fit into a viable strategy towards a sustainable society. Industry needs people who can manage the whole innovation process for sustainability, including need-finding, design, implementation through to remanufacturing. BTH is therefore offering a comprehensive master’s program to prepare people to be systems' innovators for sustainability. This programme is focused where sustainability, innovation and product-service systems (PSS) meet. Supporting areas such as leadership, management and entrepreneurship are also included. The two-year program will allow students to engage in front-edge research results and will be continuously developed in close collaboration with industry to develop a relevant profile for graduates. Students will be engaged in ongoing research projects and have industrial projects. Upon completion, students will have practical experience in using methods and tools that support sustainable product innovation, as well as have a thorough theoretical understanding as a basis for development of new supplementary methods and tools as necessary.

Products contribute to global sustainability problems throughout their entire life cycles. The majority of opportunities to influence the sustainability performance of products come when the product is designed – far before it is created or put into use. Within the aeronautics industry, there are specific targets set out by the Advisory Council for Aeronautics Research in Europe (ACARE) with one of the high-level targets being an “ultra green air transport system.” At Volvo Aero, a leading manufacturer of aero engine components, this has turned into concrete design targets like light weight, noise/emission reduction and high reliability. Volvo Aero has been used as a case in this research survey to identify some challenges and opportunities of implementing a sustainability perspective in the product innovation process in the aero industry. The overall purpose of this paper is, then, to discuss these challenges and the associated opportunities to include such a sustainability perspective to reach a sustainability-driven product innovation process.

Next generation jet engine technologies are typically driven by performance, value and environmental challenges, and appropriate technologies are developed in international research programs. One on-going engine component technology project at an aerospace component manufacturer aims to develop an engine with less fuel consumption. A likely consequence is higher pressure in the core engine, which leads to higher temperature. One way to handle the higher temperature is using a more advanced Ti-alloy for the product component, which will render a different sustainability profile. One weakness in current decision situations is the inability to clarify and understand the “value” and “sustainability” implications compared to e.g. performance features of concepts. Both “value” and “sustainability” include a rich set of features important for successful introduction of new products and product-service solutions to the market. The purpose with this research is to provide decision support for companies in early development phases for assessment of value and sustainability consequences over product-service system lifecycles. A workshop was held with the aerospace component manufacturer and a value chain partner focusing on material handling, to: i) get a better understanding of activities, flows and ownership related to the studied materials at the two companies, ii) to understand the companies’ perspective at new suggested scenarios with regard to these materials, and iii) define relevant scenarios to look into more in depth from asustainability and value perspective. Three different scenarios were developed with differences in ownership, responsibilities and value streams. It is therefore essential to be able to quickly assess and optimize consequences of such alternative scenarios. Based on the workshop experiences and scenarios, a modeling and simulation approach to assess sustainability and value consequences for the scenarios is proposed. The sustainability consequences are based on a sustainability life cycle assessment and a risk assessment. Key features of the proposed tool include: consideration of the time dimension, societal sustainability consequences, risk assessment, company value assessment, and cost/revenue perspectives.

This article aims to present identified key elements for successful implementation of a strategic sus- tainability perspective in the early phases of the product innovation process. In-depth interview studies were conducted in six companies within the same corporate group. These, together with a review of literature, previous research and company documents, were a foundation for evaluating if and how a strategic sustainability perspective has been successfully implemented on a day-to-day basis in the product innovation processes of the studied companies. The results are divided into strengths and challenges of the companies with regard to implementing a strategic sustainability perspective in the product innovation process. From this research, eight key elements for successful implementation of a strategic sustainability perspective have been identified. These elements are divided into four categories: organization, internal processes, roles, and tools. It is posited that incorporating these key elements into product innovation processes will encourage a company to have a strategic sustainability perspective, which will support the company’s long-term success.

During the early phases of design of new products, information necessary to guide and assess sustainability is typically incomplete. Manufacturers risk discovering the unfavorable sustainability impact too late to redirect the development. The purpose of this study is to search and review methods to anticipate the sustainability performance of new products in the early stages of the innovation process, and, together with a case company in the aeroengine manufacturing business, to develop and propose a systematic approach to anticipate sustainability performance. Following a literature review of 51 methods and research-based proposals, only five covered the social-, ecological-, and economic sustainability dimensions in the early phases of product development. Through an action research-based approach, a qualitative sustainability measurement tool, the Sustainability Fingerprint tool, was developed. This tool allows the development team in a company to systematically derive a sustainability performance from a set of criteria unique to the targeted product and/or product portfolio that is to be designed, from a set of scientifically well-established sustainability principles. The tool was applied in six different industry cases at the company, by the design teams and independent of any influence of the researchers. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to learn about the usefulness, usability, and applicability of the tool. It was concluded that the Sustainability Fingerprint tool has no equivalent in the literature and was considered useful for the case company during early phase design for two main reasons. Firstly, the tool is tailor-made with defined company-specific sustainability criteria that represent the most important sustainability aspects to assess. Secondly, the support tool can be used also in later phases, thereby supporting a continued innovation process. It allows designers to anticipate a sustainability performance of the solution in: the development of sustainable innovations; comparison and down-selection of alternative solutions; sustainability assessments of the product portfolio to identify improvement measures; and sustainability assessment of current products to identify sustainability hotspots. Further research will include companies from other industrial sectors and will focus on adding digital support, improved practical instructions, and, integration to existing processes and established support tools in companies today. © 2023 The Authors

Decomposing and clarify “sustainability” implications in the same way as concrete targets on product functionality is challenging, mainly due to the problem of showing numbers and ‘hard facts’ related to the value generated by sustainability-oriented decisions. The answer lies in methods and tools that are able, already in a preliminary design stage, to highlight how sustainable design choice can create value for customers and stakeholders, generating market success in the long term. The paper objective is to propose a framework where Sustainable Product Development (SPD) and Value Driven Design (VDD) can be integrated to realize a model-driven approach to support early stage design decisions. Also, the paper discusses how methods and tools for Model-Based Decision Support (MBDS) (e.g., response surface methodology) can be used to increase the computational efficiency of sustainability- and value-based analysis of design concepts. The paper proposes a range of activities to guide a model-based evaluation of sustainability consequences in design, showing also that capabilities exist already today for combining research efforts into a multi disciplinary decision making environment.

The aim of the paper is to foster a discussion in the engineering design community about itsunderstanding of the innovation phenomena and the unique contribution that comes from engineeringdesign. The paper reports on the dialouge originating from a series of workshops with participants fromdifferent backgrounds in engineering design, systems engineering, industrial design psychology andbusiness.Definitions of innovation are revisited as used in business, management and engineering designcontexts. The role of innovation is then discussed related to product development from (i) themanagement perspective, (ii) a systems architecture perspective and (iii) in relation to sustainabledevelopment as one driver of innovation.It is argued that engineering design has a central role in how to realise the novelty aspect of innovationand often plays a critical role in maturing these into the valuable products, and there is a need to articulatethe role of engineering design in innovation to better resonate with the business and managementresearch.

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.

Global society is encountering many challenges such as climate change, resource depletion, etc., which comes with a set of challenges and opportunities for businesses. Applied research in operational tools and methods that support sustainable product- and service systems innovation, aims to strengthen businesses to overcome these challenges. In recent years, several tools and methods have been developed in the sustainable product development field with focus on modelling and digitalization. This paper explores how sustainability has been integrated in modelling and simulation, and presents results from a literature review with the purpose of highlighting opportunities and challenges in the field. Furthermore, an initial model-based engineering support toolbox (MBE) is presented, with focus on support tools for socio-ecological sustainability integration in the early product development stages.

Today's trends such as globalization, increased customer demands, and increased sustainability challenges have caused a paradigm shift, where the importance of designing lean-and sustainable modern manufacturing systems is realized by many companies. This study proposes a process of action steps using Value Stream Mapping method integrated with sustainability life cycle analysis and sustainability compliance index to assist in designing lean-and sustainable production systems. The developed process was validated through a case study to test the adopted tools and how they can capture and improve the lean-and sustainability levels. The current sustainability and lean levels were explored first, followed by analyzing and developing the future improved state. A roadmap of about 40 actions was suggested to the case company distributed on a one year time plan. The key contribution of this study is an applicable and generic process of action steps including several adopted tools from the leanand sustainable product development fields to help manufacturing companies in creating roadmaps for more lean-and sustainable production systems.

Sustainable product development and sustainable manufacturing have been considered one of the main enablers towards addressing the global sustainability challenge. Sustainable communication among stakeholders in a value chain is believed to be an important catalyst for effective collaboration towards reaching sustainability goals. However, research that focuses on sustainability communication in the context of product development remains scant.

Sustainable product development literature has traditionally examined decision-making and value-adding activities without explicitly considering sustainable communication as part of these. A great variety of tools, methods and frameworks have been developed to enhance understanding of the complex sustainability challenge and support decision-making in product development and consumption. However, there lacks a complete picture of sustainability communication in product development context from a practical point of view.

This paper aims to provide an updated overview of the existing practices in sustainability communication and related support tools. The overarching research question was defined to be: How to improve support for sustainability communication among stakeholders in a value chain?

Findings reported in this paper are drawn from a conceptual literature review and a workshop with participants from two large product development and manufacturing companies. This paper outlines an overview of sustainability communication tools on operational, tactical and strategic levels in relation to stakeholders in the upstream and downstream of a value chain. It was found that the biggest communication gap lies between product developers and consumers. This led to the specific question of how can consumers communicate sustainability related information to product developers to accelerate the development towards more sustainable solutions? Challenges of bridging this communication gap, as well as challenges for applying support tools in the product innovation process are delineated. Based on the discussion with industrial partners involved in the workshop, a number of success factors of support tools were identified. Opportunities for developing sustainability communication solutions are proposed with an emphasis on connecting consumers with product developers. Two future research directions are suggested to be i) further investigation into consumer perception to improve information design on different levels, and ii) closing the communication loop with consumers using digital technologies such as the internet-of-things.

The communication of sustainability values shared between product developers and customers is an important catalyst for effective collaboration that inspires sustainable consumption. Despite the many tools developed for assessing and communicating product’s sustainability performance, customers are facing difficulties in understanding product sustainability information. The knowledge gaps remain underexplored about how product sustainability information is perceived and how this impacts customer purchasing behaviour. This paper outlines a new approach, driven by both backcasting and forecasting thinking, for understanding and modelling customer preferences for product sustainability information. We report findings from a case study of a large workplace furniture manufacturer. The study explored the potential of i) identifying prioritised sustainability attributes using Sustainability Design Space (SDS), and ii) applying machine learning to model customer preferences.

Companies struggle with identifying relevant sustainability aspects strategically, assessing alternative solutions quantitatively, and making trade-offs. This paper reports results from a prescriptive study with an aerospace company, and presents the Sustainability Criteria And product life-cycle Data Simulation (SCADS) approach. Based on strategic integration of sustainability indicators, this approach aims to enable visualisation and comparison of the sustainability implications of different concepts in early design phases of product development.

In recent years several approaches to Social LCA have been proposed. Despite recognized shortcomings of those, recent development has focused more on testing existing approaches and less on finding a unifying framework that can support Social LCA to deliver on its promise: to aid decision making regarding social issues related to product life cycles. This paper offers an analysis and evaluation of the potential contribution of the body of work on Social LCA to sustainable development using the Framework for Strategic Sustainable Development. A number of strengths and weaknesses from a strategic sustainability perspective are identified and recommendations to improve the support for how to deal with social issues in the product innovation process are provided.

Despite the growing awareness of sustainability issues and importance of considering sustainability aspects in the product innovation process, the methodological support for doing so is still immature compared to the methodological support for considering other aspects in the decision-making, such as product performance and manufacturability. The immaturity is particularly pronounced regarding the social dimension of sustainability. In this paper we use a novel process for identifying sustainability criteria and estimating a sustainability compliance index, with the purpose of supporting inclusion of social sustainability aspects in the decision-making in product development. By including social sustainability aspects into a compliance metric, the foundations for strategic and operative decisions can be integrated. The process has been developed and tested collaboratively with industry representatives in a selected case company. Preliminary results show that social sustainability criteria can be integrated in a meaningful way into a more complete metric, and that the learning resulting from gathering knowledge and experience is a first deployable benefit of the process. Challenges and possible ways forward for further implementing social sustainability aspects in product development are also identified and discussed. The next step will be to further test the applicability of the results, by involving more representatives in the case company and from companies in its value chain.

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. © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press.

Product development and manufacturing organizations struggle in their sustainability transformation and do not sufficiently contribute to sustainable production and consumption. Design researchers, at the same time, develop and propose a plethora of new and improved design methods that can support the manufacturing industry in such transformation. It is, despite this, well-documented in literature that the industrial adoption of such proposed design methods is challenging. Previous research in the design domain has mainly studied this issue from a process and methodological perspective, whereas previous research in the management domain instead has focused on organizational, and human-behavioral aspects. This poses a research gap for more interdisciplinary research that studies the adoption of design methods from all three perspectives (i.e., process and methodology, organization, and human behavior). Six parallel case studies were carried out with three different product development and manufacturing organizations to collect qualitative empirical data. Glaserian grounded theory was used to analyze the collected data. This resulted in a descriptive framework that captures 53 interdisciplinary factors influencing the adoption of sustainable design practices using new and improved design methods. The descriptive framework is compared to interdisciplinary literature to further clarify and explain the findings, highlighting both practical and theoretical implications. This research provides three main contributions to theory and practice: (1) Two new concepts are introduced and used to explain the empirical findings, which are referred to as the dualism of design methods, and the situational design problem; (2) Nine systemic barriers and eight propositions are formulated, which highlight the need for a paradigm shift in how design is practiced in industry, how cognitive biases inside organizations can lead to a state of pseudo-sustainability, and the need for improved information and data management capabilities in organizations; (3) Sustainable design thinking is proposed as an potential enabler to address several of the main barriers, as it aims to provide a base competence of sustainable design to systematically challenge cognitive biases inside organizations.

Additive manufacturing has the potential to decrease the climate impact of aviation by providing more light-weight designs. Sustainability is however required to be assessed from a systemic view, including all lifecycle phases, and from a social, ecologic, and economic dimension. This is however challenging in early phase design, where also a large design space need to be explored. A case study is carried out with an aerospace company where two candidate engineering design tools are combined to address this. The integration of these two engineering tools are applied on a Turbine Rear Structure, and shows promising results in enabling a systemic view of sustainability to be integrated and assessed in early phase design space explorations of additive manufactured components. It is recommended that the integration between the two tools is further established and validated. © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press.