News: Mar 26, 2021
An afternoon in the middle of March the new GMV collaboration concept "Researchers fika" was carried out. Ulla Tang and Mélanie Despeisse from the University of Gothenburg and Chalmers University of Technology respectively, gave speed talks on the theme "Measuring sustainability in production systems: Examples from health care and manufacturing".
This new event concept consists of speed talks on a sustainability-oriented topic from researchers representing different disciplines, followed by an opportunity to network and digitally share your favourite fika with the other participants in the meeting.
At this researchers fika, Ulla Tang clinical researcher at the Department of Orthopaedics, University of Gothenburg talked about an analysis of two systems providing insoles to patients with diabetes as an example of the need to measure sustainability in health-care. By using a new methodology the sustainability effects: ecological, economic and social can be calculated. Using this method in health-care, the contribution of health-care systems to the 17 Sustainable Development Goals can be quantified.
The second talk was by Mélanie Despeisse, Assistant Professor at the Department of Industrial and Materials Science, Chalmers. She talked on environmental impact assessment in manufacturing and the limitations of the current Key Performance Indicators (KPI) to measure sustainability. How could eco-efficient and circular solutions be measured by KPIs and be used as a basis for decision-making and continuous improvement activities? Melanie emphasised the paradox that we have to much data but the data we need is not available. And one of her concluding remarks was "What gets measured gets managed".
The speed talks followed by discussions in break-out rooms and fika mingling. The speakers could unite in that more collaboration between health care systems and production systems is needed and would be most fruitful. Also the concept of industrial symbiosis where discussed in break-out rooms, where waste from one process could be used as raw material for another process. What waste from health care production systems could be used for other processes? The fika participants where looking forward to further discuss future collaborations ideas in other forums!
