Toward an Improved Strategy for Functional Product Development by Predicting Environmental and Economic Sustainability

Functional Product (FP) has emerged as a business concept aimed at offering a function or performance, mainly in business-to- business applications, on an agreed upon level of availability and cost as well as at providing incitements towards a sustainable growth. Today the literature expanded into various specific approaches and IT solutions measuring sustainability. However, the literature lacks such approaches within the FP context. This explorative paper proposes on a conceptual level a strategy to predict a sustainability impact of an FP in terms of environmental and economic sustainability and optimize the FP configuration. This strategy is based on scenario modelling and simulation -driven approach. The practical significance of the proposed strategy lies in its implication to avoid costly “trial and error” method performed in the real world and to enable the development of more sustainable products. Through the proposed strategy, it is foreseen that sustainability impact can be quantified and minimised during the FP system development.