On January 15, 2026, the consortium of the GoProZero research project – Designing Integrated Product Creation Systems as Enablers for Zero Emissions – met at the Heinz Nixdorf Institute in Paderborn for a milestone meeting. After around a year of project work, the focus was on the results achieved, technical exchanges, and the next steps in the project.
In addition to the project partners, representatives of the project management agency Projektträger Jülich (PTJ) and the cluster management of the leading-edge cluster it's OWL also took part in the meeting.
GoProZero: Thinking about sustainability right from the start
GoProZero aims to align product development processes in companies with the requirements of a sustainable circular economy at an early stage and in a systematic manner. To this end, design principles and methods are being developed that enable product characteristics to be consistently aligned with sustainability goals during the development phase and integrated into suitable business models. A central approach of the project is to link sustainability and economic efficiency in order to specifically motivate companies to implement resource-efficient and recyclable solutions.
Milestone meeting: Results, exchange, and best practices
During the meeting, the project partners from industry and research presented their findings to date and discussed current issues relating to sustainable product development and business models. The program was complemented by keynote speeches from GEA and Rewindo, which presented best-practice examples of sustainable business models from industrial practice.
In addition, the research partners presented various tools and methods designed to support the effective transfer of project results into industrial practice.
Contribution of inIT to the GoProZero project
inIT is involved in the project through the Interconnected Automation Systems research group headed by Prof. Dr. Henning Trsek. The work focuses on the development of holistic lifecycle data management that brings together sustainability and engineering data across the entire product lifecycle and makes it available.
Together with researchers from Fraunhofer IOSB-INA, inIT is investigating requirements and design principles for future Engineering Data Spaces (EDS). These are intended to connect stakeholders along the supply chain and enable structured data exchange that supports the sustainability of products in all phases of their life cycle.
Natalia Moriz, research group leader, and Philip Sehr, research assistant in the working group, were present at the milestone meeting and actively contributed the inIT perspective to the technical exchange.
From Method to Practice: Engineering Data Spaces
A key result of the project work to date is an analysis and visualization tool developed by inIT that helps companies to record, analyze, and specifically develop their existing data infrastructure throughout the product life cycle. The tool shows which data is available in different life cycle phases and from different stakeholders, and how this data is processed.
“This tool enables companies to quickly uncover individual problems in their own engineering data space and, at the same time, identify how EDS can be further developed to enable sustainable product development,” explains Philip Sehr.
The GoProZero project will run until the end of 2027. Over the next two years, there will be a particular focus on the practical implementation of the approaches developed. In parallel with the methodological work, six flagship projects will be carried out in which concrete examples of sustainable business models will be implemented.
“The industry partners in GoProZero are very active and are driving the project forward with a high degree of initiative. Meetings like this always inspire us and provide important impetus for our research,” adds Natalia Moriz.