Sustainable Product Development and Sourcing

Sammanfattning: From product development to supply chain there is conventionally a great focus on improving product performance, decreasing time to market and reducing costs. In order to develop and source a sustainable product, many other aspects need to be included and evaluated. Scania is expected to consider its environmental and social impact, including human and labour rights in the life cycle. Scania has identified six areas of "responsible business" including diversity and inclusion, health and safety, human and labour rights, business ethics, community engagement and minimizing environmental footprint. These areas need to be integrated and incorporated into all the company's functions to deliver substantial sustainability gains. Many of the design decisions primarily made by design engineers in the early phases of product development have a paramount impact on a product/vehicle’s sustainability performance throughout the lifecycle stages. The thesis aims to identify the key design decisions and integrate three pillars of sustainability i.e., environmental, economic and social. In order to explore and increase the understanding on current practices an empirical study was performed. Data for the study was collected through interviews with people in various roles and departments and studying internal process documentations. During the thesis, evaluation of different tools and combination of tools, extracted both from Scania and academia, was conducted. The study resulted in identifying key decision points fordesign engineer i.e. – material selection, manufacturing process and assembly, surface treatment (specific to powertrain components), part selection and design feature trade- offs. The current state including existing processes and tools used for each design decision was analyzed and appropriate solutions such as checklist, SOP, key indicators, software functionality (SolidWorks sustainability model in Catia V6) etc. were developed and/or suggested. Finally, the thesis aims to conduct a case study on the existing powertrain components with some of the recommended solutions which will help integrate all three pillars of sustainability in the design decisions.