A Systematic Review of Methods and Tools for Working with Sustainability Aspects in Product and Production Co-Development from a Requirements Management Perspective

The need to prevent crossing planetary boundaries has accelerated sustainable product development and production research. This resulted in the introduction of tools and methods to support the development of sustainable products. However, practice is still challenged by changing requirements, regulations, guidelines, and a plethora of tools. This study aims to identify different tools and methods that support transferring sustainability aspects into technical requirements during product and production development through a systematic literature review in Scopus. The search was limited to articles in the engineering, manufacturing sector, and journal or conference publications in the period between 2014 and 2024. Multiple authors were involved in the selection process to avoid bias. 56 articles were selected and analyzed based on purpose, user, production support, and utilization of the requirements management process. Results indicated that good support for product development and design engineers exists, but not for production, product production co-development, and other stakeholders. A need for a requirements management-based method to support the integration of sustainability aspects during product production co-development is identified. A research framework and three research strands are proposed based on this identified need, which will be developed as future work. Exclusion criteria can introduce some limitations, but the review provides an extensive overview of existing methods and gaps.