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The Suspronet consortium
Suspronet goal and scope
Within industry a focus on services rather than products increasingly determines its competitive advantage. At the same time, it is widely believed that a service-oriented economy in general will be more sustainable than an economy oriented at the production of material goods. Under the EU's Fifth Framework Programme, in May 2002 SusProNet, the EU's first Thematic Network on Product Service Development (PSD) has been launched. The Network is organised around a core group of 7 scientific institutes and some 25 mostly industrial organisations. SusProNet forms a cluster with 7 other major EU projects that develop practical product-service systems.
The network's goal is to:
- exchange, analyse, complete and make available information on PSD best practice;
- identify research needs to create excellence in PSD in Europe;
- build a lasting EU-wide network of researchers and practitioners in the field of PSD;
- contribute considerably to various EU policy objectives, such as Integrated Product Policy, Sustainable Development, and competitive growth.
Central in the Network is a series of industry sector-oriented workshops that aim to make available Best Practice, can program research, and generate lessons for the best form of industry-authority interplay. Sectors/Need areas covered are Base materials, Information and Communication, Office workspace, Food and retail, and Households. Additionally, SusProNet aims to build up a virtual network organisation of the few 100 key professionals in the EU in the field of PSD. This is done through the organisation of open conferences, a final cluster dissemination event, and the creation of an active and elaborated website (www.suspronet.org). A key element of the website is a structured and free accessible database where over the project we will build up an overview of persons, institutes and their expertise, literature and tools reflecting best practice and know-how in the field of PDS. Experts and practitioners are encouraged to enlist themselves and their expertise via the website, which will make them part of what probably will grow out to the key expert directory in the field of PDS.
More information and participation
Interested parties who are not part of the original consortium can be involved at various levels:
- First, there is still a limited number of (funded) opportunities for industrial organisations to be actively involved in the consortium itself as participant, contributing to workshops, etc;
- Second, interested experts from industry, academia, NGOs and government can actively participate (free of charge) in the consortium's open activities (2 conferences, the internet-based virtual expertise network, SusProNet's expertise and project database, etc.);
- Third, interested parties can be more passively involved by being recipient of our information flow (newsletter, e-mail announcements, internet resources).
The SusProNet consortium
Co-ordination team:
Participants:
Advisory Board:
Cluster partners: