Data Innovations for Product Passports: A System of Systems Approach Towards Industry Symbiosis
The aim of this 1-year feasibility project is to generate and test new concepts for product passports in order to contribute significantly to the national effort by developing and evaluating a technical demonstrator of a concept for a product passport system and a data publishing specification. The government recognises the need to take a ‘whole-systems’ approach and it is this context this project proposal has been conceived.
Research questions:
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How viable is the notion of a product passport for resource identification and exchange, from a whole systems perspective, and what technologies, data model and distributed architecture might underpin its use to enable cross-industry utility?
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Which concepts of operation for product passports, are most feasible in the context of enabling new business models, ecosystems and circular economy capability?
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What circular economy (holistic) insights could product passports enable with extended capability e.g. data innovations and data-enabled infrastructures like Data trusts, distributed ledger, AI, and connected/smart technologies?
Dr Melanie King
(Principal Investigator)
Loughborough University
Dr Melanie King brings a range of expertise from two decades of working within both academia and industry. She attended the University of Plymouth as an undergraduate in Architecture and Loughborough University where she received her doctorate in Computer Science: Evaluation of Complex Technology Implementations. After periods of working as a software developer and Computer Aided Design (CAD) technician, she joined the Department of Design & Technology at Loughborough University (1998), working as a research assistant on CAD practices and pedagogy. Between 2001 and 2010, she worked as a Learning Technologist within the Faculty of Engineering. From 2011 and 2016, she was the Head of Loughborough’s Centre for Engineering and Design Education (CEDE) where she managed a highly successful team comprising technologists, educationalists, researchers and students delivering enhancement projects locally and nationally through internal, research and enterprise income.
Melanie is a creative and highly competent researcher, technologist and designer of digital products such as; simulation software, information systems, web applications and digital services. Her research brings an applied systems thinking and foresight perspective on organisational and policy issues with regards to digital innovation, digital capability and the delivery of complex systems and products, grounded in core software and systems engineering theories and practices.