Methodology for a Sustainable Design of Product-Service Systems

Abstract

Advances in sustainable product design have been carried out in the last decades both in the development of a suitable methodology and in the application of tools to assess and improve sustainability. Similar progresses for the design of sustainable product-service systems still have limited application and there is need for consistent and robust methods and indictors. This work aims at providing a practical scheme for service based organizations, which could assist them in their shift towards sustainability. A method that makes use of practical metrics and indicators to evaluate the environmental and socio-economic impacts and includes a redesign phase integrating initial specifications and sustainability strategies is proposed. The performance of a nursery school is analyzed. According to methods of sustainable product design, an approach based on the analysis of the flows exchanged throughout the service delivery was developed. Each of the sustainability dimensions were assessed using both, operational metrics and sustainability indicators. A stakeholders’ map was elaborated to identify redesign strategies focused on the social demands. In the end, a comparative presentation of both initial and redesigned service indicators is performed to detect if improvements were achieved.