Background

The transition to a circular economy requires that circular strategies such as repair, reuse, refurbishment, remanufacturing, and recycling are implemented at scale. European regulation is turning this ambition into concrete requirements: with the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR), Digital Product Passports (DPPs) will make lifecycle information on products, materials, condition, and recyclability available across organizational boundaries.

However, making lifecycle data available does not automatically make it usable. Organizations along the product lifecycle face the challenge of translating raw DPP data into information that actually supports circular decisions, for the right actor, at the right point in the lifecycle. A promising lens on this challenge is the concept of data products: curated, reusable, and governed data assets designed for specific consumption purposes. Yet how DPP data can be transformed into such “Circular Data Products”, which design requirements they must fulfill, and how they become embedded in organizational decision and service contexts remains largely unexplored.

Research Goal

You will investigate how Digital Product Passport data can be selected, aggregated, and contextualized into Circular Data Products that enable concrete circular action along the product lifecycle. Depending on your interests and background, potential research directions include:

• Transformation of DPP data into data products: Analyze how lifecycle information can be translated into reusable data products for circular services, with a focus on the organizations themselves
• Design requirements: Derive requirements for Circular Data Products regarding data quality, granularity, governance, accessibility, interoperability, and potentially AI-enabled decision support
• Organizational embedding: Examine how such data products are integrated into organizational decision and service contexts across different roles and actors along the product lifecycle
• Coordination perspective: Explore how Circular Data Products may act as coordination mechanisms in circular value networks and which business models are needed to develop, maintain, and use them

Methodologically, the thesis follows a qualitative, design-oriented approach, e.g., case studies with expert interviews, workshops, and document analysis, building on industrial cases and contacts from our research network. Depending on the direction, a scenario- or prototype-based evaluation can be a subsequent step.

Your Profile

• You are interested in topics such as sustainability and circular economy, Digital Product Passports, and data-driven services
• You are highly motivated to work on recent real-world problems in a self-organized and goal-oriented working mode, and you bring in your own ideas
• You are open-minded and willing to get in touch with professionals, e.g., through an interview study
• Very good English skills as the thesis will be written in English

Details

• Start: Immediatly

• Language: English

We offer you an exciting research topic, close supervision, and the opportunity to develop practical as well as theoretical skills. If you are interested, please send a current transcript of records, a short CV, and a brief motivation (2-3 sentences) to Linda Sagnier (linda.sagnier∂kit.edu).