A methodological approach for manufacturers to enhance value-in-use of service-based offerings considering three dimensions of sustainability

Abstract

To shift towards a sustainable society, lifecycle engineering methodologies addressing the social dimension need to be advanced. A new methodological approach is proposed for manufacturers to address the three dimensions of sustainability. This approach aims to enhance value-in-use of service-based offerings and supports designers with two social indicators and five generally applicable recommendations involving multiple product lives towards a circular economy. For validation, it was applied to the case of a manufacturer of washing machines for European consumer markets. Results show that the approach supports designers to incorporate the social dimension efficiently while improving resource efficiency.

Research Series Review for Transdisciplinarity Assessment—Validation with Sustainable Consumption and Production Research

“…This corroborates the importance of the need of high-level contextualization (i.e., consideration beyond laboratory environments) for successful PSS design research, e.g., a company's structure, culture, capabilities and management [24]. Further, the research [38] involving successful PSS cases from a CE perspective on the market in a traditional manufacturing sector has high potential to boost future practical research in a similar setting. The importance of the context and situation of a company is also acknowledged for open innovation [55].…”

“…[39] reports a case where an "industrial provider of investment machinery" "applied a method for PSS design" [36]. From the TD research perspective, this research differs substantially from its preceding research [21,[36][37][38], because the subject (i.e., the problem owner) shifted from researchers to practitioners.…”

“…and the service evaluation method [21]" (the reference labels in all the quotes are replaced with those used in this article) and applied it with the tool in "a German manufacturing company", is recognized in the first following generation in the genealogy. Several articles citing [36] are recognized in the second following generation: two references [37,38] developed the extended method [36] further through application to manufacturers of production machines and washing machines, respectively. Ref.…”

“…First, research with higher intensity in industry collaboration [36] (reporting "[t]he entire study took approximately five person-months to complete") played a role to boost the following practical research: Refs. [38,39] cited and benefited from [36] rather than the article in focus [21] directly. In fact, the implementation project [39] was granted partly because that company studied Ref.…”

What if everyone becomes a sharer? A quantification of the environmental impact of access-based consumption for household laundry activities

“…Yet, they shouldn't be neglected. Service-based offerings can contribute to a circular economy by improving resource efficiency (Sakao, Wasserbaur, & Mathieux, 2019).…”