Sustainability in product engineering – a guide to initiate targeted sustainability action

Uncertainty in coping with sustainability demands poses a challenge to decision makers concerned with manufacturing companies’ product engineering. Therefore, our paper reports on a newly developed guide to address their uncertainty and support them in initiating targeted sustainability action. The guide, based on an interview study (n = 25; 4 company cases and 1 consultancy) and a systematic literature review, addresses decision makers in product engineering and beyond. It was initially applied and evaluated in company workshops. The guide provides success criteria and reflection questions for each step toward targeted sustainability action: understanding, operationalizing, and implementing. This paper outlines the main concepts behind the guide and contributes to the literature by suggesting a novel approach to sustainability action in product engineering by addressing uncertainty.