{"id":1083,"date":"2015-06-10T00:43:56","date_gmt":"2015-06-10T00:43:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.productdevelopment.se\/?p=1083"},"modified":"2022-03-21T20:42:42","modified_gmt":"2022-03-21T19:42:42","slug":"urban-mining-global-innovation-project-with-stanford","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.productdevelopment.se\/urban-mining-global-innovation-project-with-stanford\/","title":{"rendered":"Urban Mining global innovation project with Stanford"},"content":{"rendered":"

Turning waste into value has been the topic of a global product development challenge for 11 students for the past year within the Stanford ME310 Global Design Innovation course. The innovation challenge was performed in collaboration with industrial partner Volvo Construction Equipment. The project culminated with a presentation at the prestigious Stanford EXPE.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Seven final-year BTH students in Masters of Science in Mechanical Engineering and Industrial Management and Engineering have attended the ME310 EXPE – the Stanford Design Experience – which is the end-of-year celebration of the project results in the ME310 design program at Stanford University in the heart of Silicon Valley. Attending the EXPE were Stanford and global partners’ students and faculty, as well as many industrial representatives from surrounding businesses – interested in both the project results and in interacting with the students.<\/p>\n

Given the task to turn waste into value, the students in the Volvo CE project framed their work on focusing their needfinding on construction and demolition activities in urban areas. Needfinding was conducted in various demolition sites both in California and in Sweden.<\/p>\n

\"Volvo<\/a>
Volvo NIX<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

One of their findings was that, currently, there are no ways of effectively storing large volumes of aggregate material on construction job sites in urban environments. Some contractors create their own customized solutions, but often the materials are essentially stored in stock piles on the sites – taking up a large footprint. In these tight areas, the solution is to haul the material.<\/p>\n

One of the principal solutions was the NIX. The NIX is a modular storage solution, where panels are configured into hexagon storage containers – where multiple NIX:es can be modularly configured and stacked.<\/p>\n

The Volvo NIX decreases material footprint, enabling onsite reuse, thus reducing the amount of trucking that\u2019s needed when a site is reset. This decreases the carbon emissions in handling of and reusing concrete aggregate – as well as mitigating traffic disruption. The business case for the NIX makes it net positive on the triple bottom line – thus being economically, ecologically and socially sustainable.<\/p>\n

– Not only did we get very good physical prototypes and a good need-finding story around them, we also get the complete product service system, the business model perspective and so well-documented result that we can easily bring it to the executive strategy discussions<\/em>, says Jenny Elfsberg, Director of Volvo CE Emerging Technologies.<\/span><\/p>\n

Jenny continues; This is also a very good way for us to pick up new ways of doing innovation work, based on research and recent advances in curriculum of engineering education, it supports our continuous drive towards increased innovation capability.<\/em><\/p>\n