Project description

This project is part of research conducted within the Division of Innovation at the Department of Design Sciences, LTH.

Problem

Literature and experience indicate that early-stage activities in product development largely determine a product’s properties. To develop products that enable circular material flows – aligned with the R-strategies (Potting et al, 2017) – it is therefore essential for firms to invest in design strategies and activities that support such flows.

EU regulations, e.g. the former Ecodesign Directive (EU, 2009) and the new Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR) (EU, 2024), aim to encourage firms to strengthen these design strategies. However, the extent to which such strategies are implemented within firms remains unclear.

Purpose of the study

The purpose of this master thesis project is to analyse what types of priorities and investments manufacturing firms do regarding sustainability and circularity, with particular emphasis on design for sustainability and circularity.

Research design

Public sustainability reports are intended to demonstrate the investments firms have made in sustainability and what results have been achieved. Therefore, the extent to which strategies and activities related to sustainability and circularity, with particular emphasis on design for sustainability and circularity, are reported can serve as an indicator of the level of investment in these areas.

The research design is based on using AI as a tool to analyse manufacturing firms’ sustainability reports to identify evidence of such investments. The analysis will focus on what firms are doing in terms of design for sustainability and circularity, as well as the outcomes reported from these investments.

In practical terms, the study involves the following activities:

• Extract and preprocess text from a sample of public sustainability reports.
• Use a large language model (for example ChatGPT or similar) with structured prompts to classify relevant text segments according to predefined categories.
• Aggregate the outputs in tools such as Excel and conduct analysis of individual firms and a comparative analysis across firms.
• Analysis of firm investments and activities in relation to what literature addresses as key strategies, activities, etc. regarding design for sustainability and circularity.

Prerequisites

This project is part of research conducted within the Division of Innovation at the Department of Design Sciences, LTH. Consequently, the work carried out, and the results generated from the project may serve as the basis for scientific publications. Student(s) undertaking the project must therefore agree that all materials identified, used and produced in the project, including the results and the thesis report – without restrictions – can be utilized in any way and for any purpose by the supervisors. If scientific publications are produced based on the materials, the students will be acknowledged in the publications and, subject to mutual agreement, may be included as co-authors.

Supervisors

Professor Glenn Johansson
Professor Ibtissam El Hassani

Contact

If you have any questions and are interested in this master's thesis project, contact Glenn Johansson glenn.johansson@design.lth.se