PSS4CE - Sustainable product service systems for a circular economy in Saarland

Sub-project: Product planning

Duration: 07/2022 to 06/2025

What is this project about?
Products and production processes must be made much more sustainable in order to meet today's climate and environmental challenges. It will not be possible to achieve ambitious goals with only selective efficiency approaches in existing production chains. Efficiency-oriented "circular economy" concepts, which require a shift away from today's largely linear production and consumption paradigms towards closed resource and product loops, are seen as far more promising. A promising approach to overcoming the linear "produce-use-dispose" understanding is to further develop products into product-service systems (PSS), whose ecological potential is recognized but not yet sufficiently exploited in Germany and the Saarland.

The PSS4CE project brings together engineering and business perspectives on the innovation of sustainable product-service systems in order to make suitable concepts available for the dissemination of product-service systems in the regional economy.

The team from the wi institute at htw saar is working on sub-projects 1 (product planning) and 5 (validation / transfer / coordination). In particular, the following objectives are being pursued:

• Identification of existing innovation patterns from product-service systems and circular business models
• (Strategic) product planning for product-service systems and circular business models
• Identification of implementation hurdles for SMEs in Saarland
• Development of practice-oriented guidelines for the realization of product-service systems for a circular economy in the areas of product planning, product development, technology development and process chain development

Funding information:

The PSS4CE project is funded by the European Regional Development Fund.