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Sustainability Research Implementation in Product Development - Learnings from a Longitudinal Study

Part of: Responsible Design

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 July 2019

Sophie I. Hallstedt  and
Johanna W. Nylander
Sophie I. Hallstedt*
Affiliation:
Blekinge Institute of Technology, Sweden;
Johanna W. Nylander
Affiliation:
GKN Aerospace Engine System, Sweden
*
Contact: Hallstedt, Sophie, Blekinge Institute of Technology, Department of Strategic Sustainable Development, Sweden, sophie.hallstedt@bth.se

Abstract

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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.

Keywords

SustainabilityLongitudinal studyCase studyIntegrated product developmentImplement
Type
Article
Information
Proceedings of the Design Society: International Conference on Engineering Design , Volume 1 , Issue 1 , July 2019 , pp. 3381 - 3390
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
© The Author(s) 2019

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