Servitization increases uncertainty and complexity in manufacturing firms by introducing dynamic interdependencies within and between organisations. This study proposes the conceptual lens of Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) to frame manufacturers’ service delivery systems and a hybrid simulation approach to explore the dynamic interdependencies of their servitization journeys. The case of a boiler manufacturer transforming to a provider of Heat-as-a-Service (HaaS) is used to examine the dynamic interdependencies between the growth of a service business, digitalisation efforts and operational efficiency as well as the interaction between the emerging service- and existing product business. The findings indicate that the manufacturer will experience an initial ‘cost-shock’ which will significantly decline as service delivery optimises and diagnostic accuracy improves. The study contributes to the servitization literature by introducing CAS as a theoretical perspective and hybrid modelling as a practical approach to explore and reconcile the strategic and operational dimensions of servitization.

Governmental policies and business models are considered key elements for a transition to a circular economy. In current literature, there is a lack of understanding on how these two elements interact and how this understanding is used to accelerate the realisation of a circular economy. We shed light on this issue by conducting a systematic review of the literature in combination with a literature synthesis that looked in particular at interactions between governmental policies and business models not limited to a circular economy. We systematised the findings and then applied them to a circular economy context. The results show that there is a multitude of possible interactions between governmental policies and business models. The most commonly studied interaction is between command-and-control regulations and the value proposition element of business models. Soft policy measures like information- or communication-based policies or support mechanisms are less studied. Other findings suggest that there are certain types of dynamics which are useful to understand for policymakers and business model designers alike. A few examples of the synthesised insights are i) entrepreneurs may optimise their circular business models to exploit the policy framework, ii) technologies may lead to circular business model innovation forcing policymakers to adapt, and iii) policymakers may pay special attention to the needs of circular business models and support their competitiveness.

Design for sustainability needs to apply a societal perspective. The purpose of this paper is to combine the concept of design fixation with higher levels of analysis. Design fixation is used to describe a blind adherence to known concepts during the design process. It is used mostly at the micro level of design with the focus on the activities of an individual designer or a group of designers. In this paper, design fixation gets conceptually lifted to the levels of the organisation and the institution. We ask how the understanding of design fixation helps to achieve higher resource efficiency. Examples of organisational and institutional design fixations are presented. A System Dynamics model is used to simulate the impacts of design fixation on resource use of a sociotechnical laundry systems. Applying this lens suggests that in order to solve societal design fixations, systemic parameters like infrastructure, business models, or policies need to be considered design parameters. The simulation results show that high-level design fixations can have significant impact on resource use.

The unsustainable levels of resource use and emissions of our economies and their threat to future generations are core issues of our time. The circular economy (CE) conceptualises a different type of economy that is restorative and regenerative by design and aims to keep products, components and materials at their highest utility and value at all times, distinguishing between technical and biological cycles.

The novelty of the CE requires the development of new analytical tools and methods as well as ways of thinking to understand its consequences. This research summarises four years of research on the topic of systems analysis and simulation modelling in the domain of the CE. Three topics were of major interest: First, what are the resource efficiency implications of a shift toward a CE? Second, what are the operational implications of a shift to a CE? And finally, how can systemic changes towards a CE be understood and planned? 

Four studies were conducted addressing the three research questions. The first study applies material flow analysis to a washing machine manufacturer case and looks at how different business models affect the resource flows of critical resources. It finds that service-based offerings lead to higher overall resource efficiency. The second study focuses on the implications of CE initiatives on the maintenance activities of a heat-as-a-service provider. It shows that the shift to service-based offerings requires service providers to face worse-before-better situations where long-term benefits offset short-term disadvantages. The third study is a simulation-based case study of laundry practices in Sweden. It compares a sharing economy scenario where a population shares washing machines with a scenario where the majority of people own the washing machines they are using. The results indicate that in Sweden and Europe in general, sharing has significant resource savings potential in the domestic laundry sector. The fourth study is a conceptualisation of design fixation to higher levels of analysis. It identifies examples of fixations on the organisational and institutional level. In addition, it argues that in order to design sustainable sociotechnical systems, aspects like governmental policies and business models need to be considered design parameters.

A shift to a CE needs to happen on many levels of society. This research presents simulation models that can support corporate and political decision makers in the shift to a CE. It shows that in order to understand the CE, the analysis has to be, on the one hand, able to simulate system dynamics, and on the other hand connect the multiple levels of society.

De ohållbara nivåerna av resursutnyttjande och utsläpp av våra ekonomier och deras hot mot framtida generationer är en av dagens nyckelutmaningar. Cirkulär ekonomi (CE) är en konceptualisering av en ny typ av ekonomi som är baserad på återställande och regenerativ design, som siktar på att behålla nyttan och värdet så högt som möjligt i produkter, komponenter och material, indelad i deras teknologiska och biologiska cykler.

Nymodigheten av CE erfordrar utvecklingen av nya analytiska verktyg och metoder så väl som annorlunda sätt att tänka för att förstå dess konsekvenser. Den här rapporten summerar fyra år av forskning på ämnet systemanalys och simulationsmodellering i domänen av CE. Tre ämnen var av högt intresse. Vilka är de miljömässiga konsekvenserna av ett skifte till CE? Vilka är de operationella konsekvenserna av ett skifte till CE? Hur kan den systematiska förändringen till en CE bli planerad och förstådd?

Vi utförde fyra studier för att undersöka de tre frågorna. Första artikeln använder materialflödesanalys i en fallstudie på en tvättmaskinstillverkare, och undersöker hur olika affärsmodeller påverkar flödet av kritiska resurser. Den visar att erbjudande baserade på service leder till en högre övergripande resurseffektivitet. Den andra artikeln fokuserar på implikationerna av CE initiativ på underhållsaktiviteter för en värme-som-tjänst-distributör. Den visar att skiftet till en CE kräver att möta sämre-innan-bättre-situationer där långsiktiga fördelar kompenserar för kortsiktiga nackdelar. Tredje artikeln är en simulationsbaserad fallstudie på tvättvanor i Sverige. Det jämför ett delningsekonomiscenario där en population delar tvättmaskiner mot ett scenario där majoriteten av population är ägare av egna tvättmaskiner. Resultaten indikerar att det finns en signifikant besparingspotential av resurser både i Sverige och i Europa generellt. Fjärde artikeln är en konceptualisering av design fixation till högre analytiska nivåer. Den identifierar exempel på fixation på en organisationell och en institutionell nivå. Utöver det så argumenteras det att i design av hållbara sociotekniska system aspekter som myndighetspolicyers och affärsmodeller behöver vara designparameter.

CE är ett koncept som finns i många nivåer av samhället från produktdesign till myndighetspolicyers. Det här forskning presenterar simulationsmodeller som kan stödja affärsmässiga och politiska beslutsfattare inom skiftet till en CE. Denna uppsats visar att för att förstå CE, så måste analysen dels kunna simulera systemdynamik, samt dels koppla till de multipla nivåerna i samhället.

Der hohe Ressourcenverbrauch und das hohe Emissionsniveau, die mit der westlichen Lebensweise einhergehen sind ein Hauptproblem unserer Zeit. Die Kreislaufwirtschaft (zu englisch „circular economy“) ist ein alternatives Wirtschaftsmodel, das darauf abzielt, den Wert von Produkten, Komponenten und Materialien über deren Lebenszeit zu erhalten.

Die relative Neuheit dieses Wirtschaftsmodels erfordert es, neue analytische Methoden, Werkzeuge und Denkweisen zu entwickeln. Diese Doktorarbeit umfasst vier Jahre Forschung an den Themen Systemanalyse und Simulationsmodellierung im Bereich der Kreislaufwirtschaft. Drei Fragen standen im Zentrum: Erstens, welche Auswirkungen hat ein Wechsel zur Kreislaufwirtschaft auf die Ressourceneffizienz? Zweitens, welche Auswirkungen hat ein Wechsel von produzierenden Unternehmen zur Kreislaufwirtschaft auf deren Betriebsführung? Drittens, wie können die notwendigen systemischen Veränderungen verstanden und geplant werden.

Diese Dissertation basiert auf vier Studien, die unterschiedliche Aspekte eines gesellschaftlichen Wandels zur Kreislaufwirtschaft beleuchten. Die erste Studie ist eine Materialflussanalyse, die die Ressourceneffizienz unterschiedlicher Geschäftsmodelle eines Waschmaschinenherstellers vergleicht. Dabei stellt sich heraus, dass servicebasierte Angebote zu einer erhöhten Ressourceneffizienz führen können. Die zweite Studie untersucht die Auswirkungen einer Umstellung auf Heat-as-a-Service-Angebote aus der Sicht eines Heizgeräteherstellers und dessen Betriebsführung. Die Studie zeigt, dass der Hersteller in Situation gerät, in der kurzfristige erhöhte Kosten mit langfristigen Prozessverbesserungen und geringeren Instandhaltungskosten abgewogen werden müssen. Als drittes wird eine Simulationsstudie präsentiert, in der die Wäschepraxis in Schweden im Fokus steht. Mehrere Szenarien werden verglichen, in denen die Bevölkerung dazu übergeht, Gemeinschaftswaschküchen anstatt eigener Haushaltwaschmaschinen zu verwenden. Die Simulationsergebnisse zeigen, dass, falls umgesetzt in großen Teilen der Bevölkerung, diese Sharing Economy-Praxis ein großes Potential zur Einsparung von Ressourcen hat. In der vierten Studie wird das Konzept der „design fixation“ als mögliche Ursache für die Trägheit unserer gesellschaftlichen Systeme festgemacht. Design fixation als Phänomen beschreibt das Festhalten eines Designers an bestehenden Ideen und Konzepten, das das Endergebnis des Designprozesses einschränkt. Diese vierte Studie liefert eine Einschätzung des Einflusses von design fixation auf den Ressourcenverbrauch in sociotechnischen Systemen.

Eine Umstellung zur Kreislaufwirtschaft bedeutet ein Wandel auf mehreren Ebenen der Gesellschaft. Die Komplexität dieses alternativen Wirtschaftsmodells, erfordert die Verwendung adäquater Modelle, die in der Lage sind, Gesellschaftsebenen kausal zu verknüpfen, und die entsprechenden Systemdynamiken zu simulieren. In dieser Doktorarbeit werden mehrere Simulationsmodelle präsentiert, die für Entscheidungsträger in Politik und Industrie nützlich sind, um die Kreislaufwirtschaft in ihrem Milieu besser verstehen zu können.

In order to meet the EU’s climate and resource efficiency targets, changes of our daily-life behaviors as well as business models are necessary. We developed a system dynamics model to analyze the environmental benefits of a transition from ownership-based to access-based household laundry activities. The model considers demographic, technological and behavioral aspects and assesses the environmental impact of laundry activities. The results indicate a significant potential of the sharing economy. The model is applied to the Swedish as well as the European context and allows cross-country comparisons. A higher utilization of shared machines, and extended lifespans of the machines can cut CO₂ emissions by a third and avoid raw material usage in production. The carbon intensity of the energy mix is also important for the impact of the sharing economy.

To shift towards a sustainable society, lifecycle engineering methodologies addressing the social dimension need to be advanced. A new methodological approach is proposed for manufacturers to address the three dimensions of sustainability. This approach aims to enhance value-in-use of service-based offerings and supports designers with two social indicators and five generally applicable recommendations involving multiple product lives towards a circular economy. For validation, it was applied to the case of a manufacturer of washing machines for European consumer markets. Results show that the approach supports designers to incorporate the social dimension efficiently while improving resource efficiency.

The goal of this early stage research is to is to understand how municipalities through public procurement can influence the scale-up of remanufacturing of spare parts in the automotive industry. We present an early assessment of the potential of remanufacturing to cover the spare parts demands of municipalities. The applied methods included interviews as well as a literature review on green public procurement and on remanufacturing in the automotive sector. The results show that current management of car fleets in the analysed Swedish municipalities is not leading to demand for remanufactured spare parts. We suggest that if the public sector wants to spur this aspect of circular economy, car fleets need to be managed differently and holistic assessments like lifecycle costing and lifecycle analysis should be part of the public procurement process.

Insights about the interplay between business models of an enterprise and policies by governments in a circular economy (CE) context are limited. To fill the gap, this paper aims to analyse and learn from the interplays reported in the literature beyond the CE context. It focuses on product/service system (PSS) business models, and uses a systematic literature review. Six types of policies and nine components of a PSS business model are introduced in the analysis. Results show that frequently observed types of interplays are regulatory policies versus value proposition, revenue model, and cost model; economic policies versus revenue model and cost model. On the other hand, rarely reported types are the interplays with three types of polices co-regulation, information-based, and agreement-based policies. Future research includes broadening the scope in order to get a more complete picture as well as relating the proposed approach to the current EU context.

The environmental impact of a product depends on a variety of factors. In this paper, existing assessments are extended through the system dynamics methodology. A conceptual model was developed that contains several factors influencing on the use of washing machine and related CO2e-emissions. A stock and flow diagram allows for a streamlined environmental impact assessment of washing machines in households. The results show that both, wash frequency of households and the development of the energy consumption of washing machines are crucial factors for lowering future CO2e-emissions in the washing machines industry, whereas the sharing of washing machines did not show significant impact.