Maximizing Products’ Sustainability Performance and Circularity with Digitalization – Part 3/3

Continuous meetings with the (industry) partners of the CD-Lab are key to fostering knowledge and information exchange. In October 2019, the CD-Lab team invited their “Letter of intent” (LOI) partners to a first welcome meeting at the University of Graz. To ensure the practical relevance of the research in the CD-Lab, experts from different industries are involved. Especially the data collection for the empirical research steps are organized together with the corporate partners iPoint and ARA AG and the LOI partners.
In a focus group workshop in October 2019, the CD-Lab team welcomed the LOI partners for a workshop about Sustainable Product Management in a Circular Economy context. The emphasis was on the exchange of experiences and current practices of the participants regarding sustainable and circular data management. On the one hand, the output was a collection of data sources, actors, barriers, and enablers for data-driven sustainable product management. On the other hand, a deeper understanding was gained how the data collection and exchange for sustainable product management in a circular economy could be improved (with new technologies) along the product life cycle.

Scientific collaborations

The use-inspired basic research in the CD-Lab is highly interdisciplinary and it integrates aspects from sustainable product design and assessment, supply chain management and engineering, as well as from computational and systems sciences. To foster the exchange of knowledge and expertise between these field, the laboratory engages in several international research collaboration. Among these collaboration partners are

• the Center for ECO2 Vehicle Design at the Department Engineering Mechanics of KTH – Royal Institute of Technology Stockholm/Sweden,
• the Institute for Interactive Systems and Data Science (ISDS) at Graz University of Technology (TU Graz),
• the Institute for Software Technology (IST) at TU Graz,
• the Department for Personnel Management, Work and Organizational Psychology at Ghent University/Belgium,
• LaRochelle Business School in France,
• and the Jönköping International Business School at University of Jönköping/Sweden.

Project Partners and Funding: Austrian Federal Ministry for Digital and Economic Affairs, the National Foundation for Research, Technology and Development and the Christian Doppler Research Association; iPoint-systems GmbH, AVL List GmbH, ARA AG.

Head of the Laboratory: Prof. Dr. Rupert Baumgartner

Project team:
Magdalena Rusch, BA MSc,
Josef Peter Schoeggl, PhD
Lukas Stumpf, BA MSc,
Tanja Untergrabner

Duration: 2018 – 2025

Website: https://circular.uni-graz.at/en/
Learn more about iPoint’s Digital Circular Economy approach here: https://www.ipoint-systems.com/digital-circular-economy/

About the Christian Doppler Laboratory for Sustainable Product Management

More and more consumers are interested in how sustainably the products they want to purchase are produced. Accordingly, companies are striving to ensure that their products and services meet this demand. In order to help companies, the Christian Doppler Laboratory for Sustainable Product Management enabling a Circular Economy, together with iPoint and other innovative industry and scientific partners, conducts application-oriented research to create the scientific basis for sustainability assessments and support the transition toward a circular economy. In this three-part series, Prof. Dr. Rupert Baumgartner, Head of the Laboratory, and BA MSc Magdalena Rush from the project team, will introduce the project, its research outputs, and the partner ecosystem.