Development of strategies for designing and implementing sustainable Product-Servicesystems

The project develops and implements strategies for sustainable product-servicesystems-innovations in workshops with companies and other stakeholders. Focus will be placed on implementation and possible restricting factors.

The aim of the project is to elaborate on innovations and strategies for product-service-systems (PSS) along product chains in defined demand areas (e.g. nutrition, housing, mobility). Based on existing knowledge, companies shall develop PSS ideas in a workshop series. Therefore, the experience of other companies with successful implementations (“best practice”) and the expertise of the project team resulting from previous PSS-projects shall be used. A special focus will be placed on the development of ideas that can be implemented in practise in the demand areas. Company specific and demand area specific framework conditions (e.g. legal, financial and organisational) will be examined, possible obstacles assessed and strategies on how to overcome them elaborated upon. Research- and development work on the topic of PSS throughout the last years have led to a large number of examples and analyses on sustainable demand areas and branches as well as on factors for success and failure. To further strengthen the approach of sustainable PSS, it is now necessary to gather know-how, experiences and competences and to develop a “business plan” for the implementation of PSS-innovations within companies. Best practice examples play a crucial role for the dissemination of PSS in all demand areas. Therefore it is important to improve the information and availability of best practice collections within existing channels of information and innovation. The project aims in overcoming existing and already analysed obstacles in the implementation of sustainable PSS. This will be done through a structured discussion process which will be accompanied by a supervised strategy-development-process.

The focus of this project is placed on supervised expert talks in the course of single workshops with companies and other stakeholders (e.g. branch specific associations) along product chains. The aim is to discuss the questions raised and to develop specific strategies for single demand areas for the implementation of sustainable PSS. Around 100 companies and 400 involved players from companies, policy and business organisations will be contacted, informed and involved into the strategy development process.

For each of the following demand areas a specific workshop will be held:

• Nutrition

• Housing

• Running machines and facilities

• Energy (including cooling)

• Cleaning of buildings, containers, machines and facilities

• Chemicals-based processes

• Mobility and transport

• Recycling

The eight workshops have the following targets: First of all demand field specific results from a previous project will be presented to the companies and other stakeholders involved in the workshop. National and international best practice examples and their success will be presented. After that follows a discussion of the research questions of the project and of success and failure factors together with and from the view of the participants. In the end specific strategies for strengthening and implementing sustainable product-service-systems will be elaborated.

SERI is project coordinator and responsible for the organisation of the workshop on energy and mchines.