Sustainable product development

Chalmers University of Technology, Industrial and Materials Science

About us

The group of sustainable product development concerns itself with the development of capabilities to effectively develop technologies, products, and service solutions that contribute to a sustainable and circular economy.

Our current focus is on supporting companies to integrate and implement a strategic sustainability perspective into their product innovation processes - from a strategic and tactical to an operational level.

The vision is to contribute to excellence in knowledge and practice - in the field of Sustainable Product Development. This includes to create a competence platform for researchers, students and companies to meet, share and learn from each other with the aim of accelerating the transformation towards a sustainable society.

We have a first prototype version of a Digital Sustainability Implementation Package, called DSIP, in which we provide access to our methodologies, methods, and tools to use in practice. The ambition is to develop a

Research focus

In an accelerating sustainability transformation, it is required that companies develop: sustainable and circular solutions; new sustainable technologies at a faster pace; and, be able to benefit from new policies and regulations that steer towards a socio-ecological sustainable society. Sustainable and value-creating life cycle solutions need to be developed by new working methods and capabilities in companies.

Sustainable Product Development focus on how a strategic sustainability perspective can be integrated and implemented in decision support systems in the early phases of the product innovation process.  Focus on developing knowledge and capabilities for industrial sustainable innovation by systemic design. A scientific underlying definition of sustainability together with a backcasting approach is used as the basis to develop SPD support that address strategic, tactical and operational views on sustainable product development. 

The aim is to establish research methods and tools for the systematic development of solutions with a sustainability perspective during its entire life cycle. This includes to integrate value and sustainability assessments in design space exploration, develop scenarios to anticipate value creating sustainable solutions, and support design capabilities to create sustainable value chains for sustainable and circular solutions.

Focus areas

  • One example of a project in this focus area is a FFI project called CADCOD we ran together with Volvo technology AB, that aims to propose a circular collaboration framework for early development efforts, including guidelines and methodology, to explore and invest in circular solutions.

    This addresses the need to prepare the automotive industry for co-developed circular solutions that leverage the requirements to provide transparency and traceability of sustainability-related product information throughout the product life cycle and value chain.

  • Example of question in this area is: in which ways can design teams include new criteria/indicators from a Digital Product Passport in early design to develop value-created sustainable life cycle solutions?

    In this focus area we recently ran a FFI project with Volvo Technology AB and SPD team at BTH, with the purpose to analyze how Automotive Manufactures can benefit from the expected increase of transparency and traceability. This work has resulted in a road map and Action plan report with a vision, identified key development areas, and suggested actions and roadmap.

  • One example of question for this area is: In which ways does AM supports sustainable product development for products with complex life cycles?

    The aim is to improved processes to assess novel sustainable technologies, which can support a sustainability transition. These technologies will be assessed from a strategic socio-ecological sustainability perspective and a complete lifecycle perspective. The aim is to better understand how to increase its potential to support a radical shift towards a sustainable society, before these technologies have been established.

    In a perspective paper we highlighted multiple actions on how we can contribute to making Additive Manufacturing (AM) an enabling strategy for sustainable growth.

Research partners