Maximizing Products’ Sustainability Performance and Circularity with Digitalization – Update on Research Activities

Anything but a standstill is currently happening in the Christian Doppler Laboratory for Sustainable Product Management: the team of the CD-Laboratory is successfully driving progress in their research endeavors which can be seen by, inter alia, their growing record of publications. Also, a new industrial partner joined the CD-Laboratory, which enables the tackling of new and exciting research projects conducted in the CD-Laboratory.

AVL List GmbH as new industrial partner

In June, the AVL List GmbH joined the CD-Laboratory officially as industrial partner. As a result, the CD-Laboratory was extended through two additional work packages which will complement the ongoing research. To tackle these newly added research endeavors, AVL List GmbH co-funded two new PhD positions. One position has been filled by Katharina Berger, whose research will focus on developing a concept for continuous product labelling of an automotive traction battery with a digital sustainable circularity twin. The other position was filled by Vassiliki Theodoridou, who will focus her work on determining a global sustainability optimum of alternative heavy-duty powertrain configurations in varying use cases.

Growing record of publications

Over the course of the last weeks, the team of the CD-Laboratory was able to further drive their progress in their research endeavors. The result can be seen, inter alia, in the growth of their contributions to the scientific community and science to public activities:

The conducted research of the CD-Laboratory is located in the areas of sustainability management and assessment, circular economy, and digitalization. The recently provided research output concerns itself, for example, with exploring connections between sustainability and circular economy, the analysis of circular economy business examples, data-driven sustainable product development in a circular economy, and data-driven decision-making instruments to support circular product design.

Close cooperation with industry partners

The CD-Laboratory strives for close cooperation with its industry partners. In September, for example, the CD-Laboratory, in cooperation with Andreas Schiffleitner (iPoint-Austria GmbH), contributed a presentation and a corresponding conference paper on data-driven sustainable product management at the Electronic Goes Green Conference 2020. The conference paper is currently being extended for a journal publication. In this semester, the research collaboration is furthermore extended, as Andreas Schiffleitner will co-teach a course on digital sustainable product management at the University of Graz. In this course he will provide the students with the latest insights on the digital circular economy with practical examples from the iPoint Group.

More detailed information on the CD-Laboratory’s published content and collaborations will be provided in the future, so stay tuned! Links to the publications can be found at https://circular.uni-graz.at/en/ .

Head of the Laboratory: Prof. Dr. Rupert Baumgartner

Project team:
Katharina Berger, MSc
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.