Analysis and reduction of the Cumulative Energy Demand of technical Product-Service Systems

• Applicant: Professor Dr.-Ing. Jan C. Aurich
• Subject Area: Production Systems, Operations Management, Quality Management and Factory Planning
• Term: from 2014 to 2018
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 258971663

Technical Product-Service Systems (PSS) consist of a technical product that is enhanced by different services along its life cycle. Nowadays, nearly every manufacturer of capital goods offers different services related to a technical product. When increasing ecological sustainability, the energy demand of PSS is gaining in importance. The Cumulated Energy Demand (CED) is a well-known method to determine the energy demand of an economic good. It indicates the entire energy demand, valued as primary energy, which arises in connection with the manufacturing, use, and disposal of an economic good or which may be attributed respectively to it in a causal relation. Existing research works have already investigated the CED for manufacturing various materials, of technical products, and within manufacturing systems. PSS constitute a new scope of investigation, which contains new challenges regarding the determination, analysis, and reduction of the CED.The overall goal of the proposed research project is to make a significant contribution regarding fundamentals for improving ecological sustainability of PSS. The first objective is, to enable the determination of the CED of PSS. The second objective lies in identifying effects of PSS changes on the CED of PSS in order to understand cause-effect-relationship, which build the basis for analyzing the CED of PSS. The third objective is to enable a systematic reduction of the CED of PSS.Based on two application scenarios from the capital goods industry, requirements are to be analyzed with respect to determination, analyzing, and reducing the CED of PSS. Based on that, a PSS specific method for determining the CED of PSS is developed that overcomes the current separated KEA consideration of products and services. Afterwards, effects of PSS changes on the CED have to be identified and classified. Based on the classified PSS changes, cause-effect-relationships are to be derived and to be described in general impact-mechanisms by using event-driven process chains. These impact-mechanisms form the basis for a method for analyzing the CED of PSS. With regard to the reduction of the CED of PSS, general measures have to be developed in order to trigger the impact mechanisms (control levers). These control levers have to be implemented into a method for reducing the CED of PSS. The validation of the entire concept is carried out using the application scenarios from the capital goods industry. The results of this research project will help capital goods manufacturers to analyze and reduce the CED of PSS systematically.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants