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.

This chapter addresses two critical aspects of sustainability integration in product design and development. The first aspect considers the scope and rigor of the approach to identify criteria to guide development of solutions with high sustainability performance, i.e., the depth and detail. The second aspect is the limited implementation of existing sustainable product development approaches in industry, which wants new tools and methods to be quick and easy to use. In three use case applications the approaches to identify leading sustainability criteria are evaluated. The results are discussed to provide guidance for industry and academia in what approach to select depending on design context, as well as directions for future research. 

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.

As manufacturing firms move from pure product-based business models toward Product-Service Systems offerings, value creation becomes more complex and requires more active cross-disciplinary collaboration. Especially non-functional values, those connected to the overall PSS behavior, depend on the successful alignment and coordination between perspectives. However, understanding the value creation itself, particularly among different departments or stakeholders, can be challenging. This paper conceptualizes a value model and a method based on Group Model Building to support value exploration of non-functional design objectives in early-stage Product-Service System design. The value model is constructed based on three layers of granularity to visualize how value is created holistically. Further, the proposed method allows participants to jointly explore and identify design objectives and put these in the context of value. The method and model were tested at two companies, showing that the proposed method and model successfully supported a collaborative value exploration in the non-functional domain. © 2023, IFIP International Federation for Information Processing.

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.

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 research seeks to investigate the effects of a Group Model Building approach on the sustainability knowledge base prior to the weighting of design requirements. Current practice shows that the knowledge about sustainability impacts and implications on other design objectives often is limited and dispersed among decision-makers. Including sustainability criteria in needs and requirements, therefore, tend to rely on limited knowledge and decision-support, leading to decision-makers often prioritizing design objectives that they are more experienced with. The aim of this research was to capture and discuss effects on team alignment of contextual sustainability understanding from co-modeling impacts and implications of sustainability on other design objectives. The research question guiding the study is ‘what are the effects of a group model building approach on early sustainability design decisions?’. A mixed-methods research, structured according to four assumptions, was designed to analyze effects quantitatively and qualitatively. The assumptions were that the proposed approach helps design teams foster an improved contextual sustainability understanding, align the view of the relative importance of sustainability, identify suitable sustainability improvement, and increase the knowledge maturity of their design decisions. The results triangulation showed that the participants showed signs of improved sustainability understanding of their design projects and that improvement actions were identified from applying the approach. A statistically relevant converging effect could be found on the team alignment of the weighting of sustainability criteria but not on the knowledge maturity. These findings are discussed to conclude on main contributions, limitations, and areas for future work.

Product development and manufacturing continues to be a profound contributor to the socio-ecological problems and challenges we are facing in our world today. For products to contribute to sustainability requires not only that socio-ecological lifecycle impacts are considered in the initial stages of the product innovation process, but that they are maintained as integral product requirements. Although research offers a plethora of approaches, methods, and tools for sustainable product development, the implementation in industry remains low. The focus of this research is a less explored area of sustainable product development implementation, the management of needs identification and propagation of design requirements. The purpose is to: i) add to state of knowledge about current practices of sustainability integration into requirements, and ii) the academic discussion on implementation of sustainable design and product development. A self-assessment approach for sustainability integration into requirements is tested. The purpose of the approach is to support improvement of the requirements management process design, including activities and competencies, for engineering design. Four Swedish product development and manufacturing companies tested the approach, from which the results are used to evaluate usefulness, usability, and effect potential. The findings are discussed together with key characteristics for requirements and sustainability criteria, providing insights to ensure that socio-ecological considerations are both influencing the initial requirement specification, and maintained as decision parameters throughout the product development process.

Product development companies’ attention and desire to contribute to sustainable development is growing fast but requires new capabilities. The socioecological systems constitute a complex landscape of operating conditions from which product development identify needs for new products. Correct needs interpretation is essential to ensure that the requirements that the needs are transformed into do represent the shared understanding of the design problem that is to be solved. However, companies find it challenging to integrate sustainability into requirements. Socioecological criteria therefore tend to be down prioritized in trade-offs with traditionally identified requirements for engineering design.

This thesis asks the following question: “In which ways can decision-making practices for requirements development and management support sustainable product development?” and aims to provide deeper knowledge to academia and support product development companies that wish to advance their contribution to sustainable development. A mainly qualitative research design using exploratory, descriptive, and prescriptive studies clarifies the research gap, and proposes and evaluates novel approaches to improve the state of knowledge and practice. These research studies are represented by the seven publications within this thesis. The first was a systematic literature review on current methods and tools for sustainability integration into requirements. Thereafter followed a multiple-case study with semi-structured interviews at seven Swedish product development companies. A model of five key elements of sustainability integration in requirements was proposed, which in a third, focus group case study with four companies, was developed into, and tested as, a self-assessment tool. The results were discussed in relation to theory on requirements engineering and sustainability design criteria, which emphasized that companies lack capabilities to contextualize requirements development using wider sustainability- and systems perspectives. Decision-makers responsible for requirements weighting need to anchor sustainability as a value driver which requires transparency and traceability in decision-support. A fourth study therefore explored sustainability integration in value modelling for concept selection, and a fifth study proposed an approach to guide sustainability criteria development following requirement characteristics. The sixth study proposed an approach to inform requirement analysis through improved systems contextualization, transparency, and shared understanding of sustainability in relation to other design objectives. Finally, the seventh study provided an outlook and initial discussion to guide the identification of value drivers on a macro-level in society which could leverage an increased uptake of sustainability-oriented requirements in product development

Altogether this thesis provides insights and approaches to guide companies to advance towards sustainable product development through the lens of requirements. Examples include key characteristics of, and principles for, identifying sustainability criteria and developing requirements using strategic sustainability thinking, as well as a support tool for guiding activities in different steps of the requirements development. The findings can also be used in education of future engineers and decision-makers, and for continued research.

This paper addresses two critical aspects of sustainability integration in product design and development. The first aspect considers the scope and rigor of the approach to identify criteria to guide development of solutions with high sustainability performance, i.e., the depth and detail. The second aspect is the limited implementation of existing sustainable product development approaches in industry, which wants new tools and methods to be quick and easy to use. In three use case applications the approaches to identify leading sustainability criteria are evaluated. The results are discussed to provide guidance for industry and academia in what approach to select depending on design context, as well as directions for future research.