With our courses, we want to strengthen the abilities and skills of our students in solving problems independently for the career profiles they want to pursue. The students should recognize the importance of the topics and questions covered for their future work in business, science and administration. They identify challenges and are able to develop solutions on their own. Thereby, the courses convey essential technical and methodical basics. In addition, we also want to encourage interdisciplinary and creative (lateral) thinking beyond one’s own discipline, as required to solve complex and difficult practical problems. In this way, we want to enable students to acquire specialist and methodological skills to solve problems in an independent way.
We offer modules and theses with a special focus on environmental and resource management, circular economy and bioeconomy as well as related areas of production and logistics, supply chain management and quantitative methods of business administration.
The Professorship Circular Economy regularly offers the following courses at Bachelor and Master level.
Bachelor Studies
Module ID
Language
English
Term
Summer
Credits*
6 ECTS
Content
- Circular Economy as a concept to approach sustainability needs
- History and policies related to the development of a circular economy
- CE Schools of thought
- Natural / biogeochemical material cycles as role models for the CE
- Assessing environmental impacts in a CE
- Assessing CE from a material perspective
- CE from a macroeconomic perspective
- Value Creation and emerging business models in a circular economy
- Design for Sustainability
- Special topics and use cases
* The number of credits may vary from course to course in individual cases. The value shown in the transcript of records applies.
Module ID
Language
English
Term
Winter
Credits*
3 ECTS
Content
- Repetition of LCA methodology according to the ISO Standards 14040/14044 and deepens it for practical applications.
- Inclusion of all core phases:
- Goal and scope definition
- Life cycle inventory
- Impact assessment
- Interpretation
- Focus on the Python-based Brightway2 framework and the Activity Browser interface.
- The main application component of the course involves modeling a simplified LCA of a simplified example in Activity Browser / Brightway2.
- Students learn to set up a project, model the considered system, select datasets, perform impact assessments, and interpret the results critically.
* The number of credits may vary from course to course in individual cases. The value shown in the transcript of records applies.
Module ID
Language
English
Term
Summer
Credits*
6 ECTS
Content
- Introduction to systems and life cycle thinking
- The four phases of life cycle assessment
- Goal and scope definition
- Life cycle inventory analysis
- Life cycle impact assessment
- Interpretation
- Software systems and databases for material flow analysis and life cycle assessment
- Material flow analysis
- Method of material flow analysis
- Material flow networks
- Determination of mass flows and stocks
- Material flow modelling
- Uncertainties and their handling
- Current trends and developments in material flow analysis and life cycle assessment
- Case studies
* The number of credits may vary from course to course in individual cases. The value shown in the transcript of records applies.
Module ID
Language
English
Term
Winter
Credits*
6 ECTS
Content
- Circular economy opportunities and challenges in different industries
- Circular economy strategy analysis
- Multiple lifecycle thinking
- Material supply risks due to macro-economic influences
- Open circular innovation process
- Cross-value-chain circular systems
- Stakeholder negotiations
- Circular economy consulting pitch
- Industry deep dive for circular electronics
- Literature research and current trends/developments
- Case studies
* The number of credits may vary from course to course in individual cases. The value shown in the transcript of records applies.
Module ID
Language
German and English
Term
Winter and Summer
Credits*
12 ECTS
Content
In the project study, students acquire hands-on experience by working with companies/institutions/agencies on a particular assignment, for example:
- sustainability analyses of single activities or projects
- the application of optimization tools for problems out of the logistic sector,
- the description of a marketing strategy.
They structure the project and employ their methods and theories to develop results of practical value for the company/institution/agency. The project is supervised jointly by mentors from the respective partner company/agency and the professor of the TUM Campus Straubing. The project study should be accomplished in about three to six months.
* The number of credits may vary from course to course in individual cases. The value shown in the transcript of records applies.
Master Studies
Module ID
Language
English
Term
Summer
Credits*
7 ECTS
Content
The module deals with actual topics from Circular Economy and Sustainability Management. These differ from semester to semester. Topics will be announced at the end of the preceeding semester.
* The number of credits may vary from course to course in individual cases. The value shown in the transcript of records applies.
Module ID
Language
English
Term
Summer
Credits*
6 ECTS
Content
- Systems and life cycle thinking
- LCA following the ISO 14040/14044 and ILCD standards
- Extension of Life Cycle Assessment to Life Cycle Sustainability Assessments
- Advanced Life Cycle Impact Assessment Methods such as for
- Land use and land use change
- Water use
- Resource use
- Attributional and consequential assessments
- Regionalisation of inventories and impact assessments
- Hybrid approaches
- Uncertainty handling
- Interface with Multi Criteria Decision Analysis
- Presentation and visualisation of results
- Handling of data uncertainty
- Current trends and developments
- Software systems and data bases for material flow analysis and life cycle assessment
- Case studies
* The number of credits may vary from course to course in individual cases. The value shown in the transcript of records applies.
Module ID
Language
English
Term
Winter
Credits*
5 ECTS
Content
- Systems and life cycle thinking
- Life Cycle Assessment
- Goal and Scope Definition to plan the outline of the LCA study
- Life Cycle Inventory for data collection and reconciliation
- Life Cycle Impact Assessment to assess the potential environmental impacts
- Handling of data uncertainty
- Literature research and current trends and developments
- Software systems and databases for life cycle assessment
- Case studies
* The number of credits may vary from course to course in individual cases. The value shown in the transcript of records applies.
Module ID
Language
English
Term
Summer and Winter
Credits*
6 ECTS
Content
- The nature of innovation in its inherent key ingredient: Uncertainty.
- The process of industrial innovation and its various stages
- Tools to manage each stage of the innovation process professionally to reduce uncertainty & risk and improve the performance and results of each stage
- The different levels of industrial innovation and their interdependencies
- The creation and management of innovation portfolios, innovation roadmaps, and innovation projects
- The concept of ESG in sustainability management and various ESG criterions
- Legal and policy frameworks regarding sustainability/ESG such as the European Green Deal
- The impact of sustainability/ESG on performance, shareholder value, and investment decisions
- The introduction of various theoretical frameworks regarding the development of human value systems related to sustainability/ESG
- The introduction and discussion of various broader sustainability/ESG-driven innovation frameworks such as circular economy, sharing economy, sustainable urban mobility, bioeconomy, carbon to value/decarbonization, sustainable energy systems etc.
- Identifying innovation potentials regarding sustainability/ESG inside innovation frameworks, business models, products, systems or components and tools to address these potentials to create value
- The creation and management of sustainability/ESG-related innovation portfolios, road maps and projects
- An interdisciplinary and coached real-life simulation in teams on selected sustainability/ESG-driven innovation ideas/proposals to apply and train the gained knowledge on how to identify promising projects and transform them into successful marketable products.
* The number of credits may vary from course to course in individual cases. The value shown in the transcript of records applies.
Module ID
Language
English
Term
Winter
Credits*
6 ECTS
Content
- Sustainability aspects of industrial production and consumption
- Reasons for considering sustainability aspects in production management
- Measuring sustainability of production and operations
- Sustainable product and service design
- Sustainable sourcing
- Sustainable production management
- Sustainability of logistics
- Managing wastes, waste water, air emissions and product returns
* The number of credits may vary from course to course in individual cases. The value shown in the transcript of records applies.
In addition, we continuously supervise Bachelor’s and Master’s theses. Please see our advertised topics or contact us with your own topic suggestion.
