Sustainable Industrial Production – undergraduate course on methods and tools in industry’s environmental work

The course aims at teaching key methods and tools for industry’s environmental work. It focuses on operational tools targeted for environmental improvements at various levels of intervention: the product, the production, the process and the emission. At these intervention levels, engineering disciplines are taught within the areas of: Management and planning, System description and inventory, Analysis and assessment, and Design & construction. The student is given the overview and holistic understanding of existing methods and tools and their field of application. Some methods and tools are taught at the level of introduction, some are taught at a level allowing the student to fully master the tool. The teaching is highly integrated with project team work in close relation with industry divided between four thematic topics: Environmental policy and reporting in industry, life cycle assessment and eco-design, process integration and pinch analysis, and finally a case study of own preference. All project work is done on real industry projects, and the project team gets close encounter with the companies and constructive critique during their work allowing them to incorporate the critique. The format of reporting varies between technical report, poster and scientific journal article, in this way teaching the student the discipline of communication as well as the methods and tools themselves. The course gives 10 ECTS credit-points and is recommended placed in 4th – 8th semester.