Analysis and assurance of the ecological sustainability of technical Product-Service Systems in the early design phase

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Technical Product-Service Systems (PSS) consist of a technical product, which is supplemented and extended over the entire lifetime by various services. PSS are regarded as an approach for reducing resource consumption as well as environmental impact. Many empirical studies have led to a finding that the environmental benefits of PSS are case-specific and not generally valid. Nevertheless, another recognition states that the approach of PSS is beneficial in terms of reduction of the environmental impact if the awareness of environmental sustainability is already integrated into the early design phase of PSS. The inadequate consideration of the ecological sustainability of PSS in the early design phase of the current research status represents the initial problem of the project proposal.The overall objective of the proposed project is to analyze the potential of PSS in terms of its environmental sustainability at an early stage and to use the findings to reduce the environmental impact of PSS. The first sub-goal is to explore the environmental impact of PSS. The second sub-goal is to develop the measures to reduce the environmental impact of PSS. The third sub-goal is to transfer the findings for the analysis and reduction of the environmental impact of PSS into a method as well as to integrate it into a process model, which describes the tasks and steps for eco-design of PSS.Based on six application scenarios from the capital goods industry, interactions between physical product and services are analyzed, and the production factors in the systems of the provider, the customer and the partners of PSS are specified. Based on this, the environmental impacts of PSS are explored by adapting the fundamental methods for balancing the environmental impact to PSS, identifying and classifying the critical processes of PSS. For the systematical derivation and evaluation of measures to reduce the environmental impact of PSS, their influencing factors should first be identified in form of a cause-effect analysis, and their change potentials should be explored as well. From this, measures to reduce the environmental impact of PSS are developed and systematized in a catalog of measures. In order to enable the selection of measures, an evaluation concept and a method for objective conflict analysis are developed. The findings on the investigation and reduction of the environmental impact of PSS are finally transferred to a method and integrated into a general process model for eco-design of PSS.