System Orientation as an Enabler for Sustainable Frugal Engineering: Insights from Automotive Material Development

Abstract

Research about barriers towards green material transition in automotive often points to technical or regulatory barriers. Contrary we emphasize an under-researched inhibitor, namely the underlying innovation assumptions and technical requirements in organizations that define themselves as quality-driven. As sufficiency represents a vital strategy to encounter corporate sustainability, especially Western organizations are forced to rethink their “bigger and better innovation ideologies”. Thus, our research shows that overly high and complex technical requirements that may not be relevant for a specific use case represent a serious barrier for the implementation of often inferior secondary polymer materials. We address the emerging challenges through the theoretical lens of frugal engineering that offers a promising contribution to corporate sus-tainability due to its focus on core functionalities and optimized performance levels. Using a mixed-method expert interview study as part of an ongoing action research project within a leading German automotive OEM we develop a system-oriented approach for sustainable and frugal engineered polymer materials. The method will support engineers and product developers to overcome overengineering and mitigate requirement-based inhibitors of life cycle engineering. Future research should examine the discussed barrier in other industries and substantiate the applicability of our proposed method with further case studies.

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