UdZ 3-2012

36 Unternehmen der Zukunft 3/2012 UdZ Dienstleistungsmanagement SustainValue: Development of a life cycle costing tool for sustainable solutions The EU-funded project SustainValue deals with new challenges and opportunities that sustai- nability offers to manufacturers. Apart from designing industrial models and performance standards, tools and methods will be developed to support the change to more sustaina- bility. This article illustrates a modelling tool to support decisions during the development process of sustainable solutions. More than ever it is crucial to calculate future life cycle cost during the development and innovation process of solutions or product service systems. Considering sustainable solutions, the challenge and management problem is even more demanding. Managers and engineers have to transfer aspects from different dimensions, such as economical, ecological and social, into measurable factors to calculate the impact on the life cycle during the development phase. This article presents a holistic modelling approach to reveal intangible impacts that constantly change during the development and life cycle phases. Besides it will be illustrated how to integrate the modelling approach into a solution development methodology. Motivation Unique solutions or product service systems (PSS), which integrate services and products into a high value offering, are dominating markets. Innovative PSS are regarded to be the crucial factor for competitive strength [1]. This is why the development phase of a solution is becoming more relevant, as this phase is most likely causal for effects in the following phases of a life cycle. The economic costs of a life cycle are only one impact to mention. Supplementary impacts arise from the environmental and social dimensions of sustainability, recognizing that these impacts oc- cur at all stages in the life cycle, including during customer use. A sustainable solution or Product- Service-System (PSS) is defined as a combination of tangible products and intangible services to fulfil individual customer needs, while causing minimal negative environmental and social impact in the process of maximizing economic added value [2].In the context of SustainValue a model has been developed, which can calculate and quantify the life cycle impacts of a sustainable solution for the relevant stakeholders; the inter- dependencies of different factors of sustainability can be displayed and simulated. Previous efforts to calculate the interrelated impacts (economic, ecological and social) have not been as success- ful as appropriate. Especially when considering customer solutions, many high complex factors have to be considered during the development. The system dynamics method that was used for the life cycle calculation model suits well to these development challenges, because it allows understanding the behaviour of a complicated system with many causal relations over time [3]. Calculation basis from the three dimensi- ons of sustainability For calculating the economic costs of a sustaina- ble PSS, the Net-Present-Value (NPV) method was used. The NPV calculates whether an investment is worthwhile, considering costs, investments, cash flows and a riskless rate of return, which is a company’s individual value. An investment is recommended if a positive net present value can be assured. The economic life-time of the project does not end after selling a solution, but is calculated until the disposal; thus sustainability is guaranteed over the whole life cycle of a PSS. In literature the NPV method is regarded as pre- dominant versus other methodologies [4], that is why this method is used in the developed model of sustainable life cycle calculation. There are different ISO and DIN standards being relevant for measuring the ecological impact of Figure 1: Design and aspects of the simulation tool Projekttitel SustainValue Projekt-/ Forschungsträger Europäische Union (FP7 – NMP) Förderkennzeichen 262931 Projektpartner Technical Research Centre of Finland (VTT), Politecnico di Milano (POLIMI), Cambridge University (CU), Center of Industrial Asset Ma- nagement at University of Stavanger (UiS), The German Institute for Standardization (DIN), FIDIA, Riversimple (LLP), CLAAS Selbtsfahrende Erntemaschinen GmbH, ELCON Solution Oy Ansprechpartner Dipl.-Ing. Christian Grefrath Internet www.sustainvalue.eu