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Industry is a key player in the transition to a sustainable society where manufacturing companies need to respond to the challenges of environmental concerns in several ways. Still, even if several efforts have been made in practise and academia, more research within operations management is addressed in relation to implementing sustainable solutions. The management of change in production systems, such as energy efficiency, will be one of the important future areas for the industry.

In accordance, the objective of the licentiate thesis is, by theoretical and empirical work, focused on developing a model to support the implementation of environmental requirements. Literature reviews as well as two empirical case studies have been conducted in order to explore the environmentally driven change. The first case study conducted is an retrospective multiple case study, including four cases studying the implications of implementation of technology and identifying key factors effecting the outcome of the change. The second case study is an international multiple study, including nine case companies. The study explores what needs to be considered, the drivers for initiating change as well as the key factors effecting the outcome of the change process. The studies conducted and the results are presented in five appended papers.

The research identifies three important links for managing environmentally driven change: how the requirements are introduced, how and if the link between strategic and operational level has been considered and how the need for change is transferred to action and implementation. By providing a system approach for managing change, it also points out the importance of understanding the organisational abilities and maturity of the companies that influence the projects. The result points out sets of drivers as well as key factors, related to the organisational abilities, that are effecting the outcome.

As future research the model, that is developed to support operations management in their work to implement environmentally driven change, needs to be validated in practise. In particular research on the personal commitment and the collaboration is addressed to be studied in relation to a systematic approach as well as how to balance the priorities during the implementation.

Industry is a key player in the transition to a sustainable society, where manufacturing companies need to respond to the challenges of environmental concerns in several ways. The need for managing environmental technological change in production systems is and will continue to be a challenge for manufacturing companies, as they often tend to focus on short-term priorities to stay economically competitive, rather than developing the organisation to manage longer-term environmental competitiveness.

In accordance with this, the objective of the thesis is to develop an understanding of how to manage environmental technological change in a production system. By identifying four categories of contextual preparedness, these being short-term focused, trade-off prepared, balance-seeking or long-term prepared, the thesis provides perspectives on how to manage change related to time and contextual aspects. The operation managers need to manage the projects by allocating individuals who can work systematically and build a strong knowledge base by collaborating with internal and external stakeholders. It shows that knowledge is not only about technology but also about realising the need for change and developing strong longer-term objectives.

A model is developed to support operations managers with purposeful actions, such as reflecting upon their long-term capabilities and making conscious decisions when to manage their environmental technology change processes regarding their own production system. The model presents how to “zip” sustainability into operations, so as to provide guidance for operations managers on how to systematically manage long-term change in a context that needs to work with multiple time aspects - and priorities. By using the term zip it is emphasised that the long-term developments have to be consciously integrated into the organisation aligned to the short-term needs.

Literature reviews, as well as four empirical case studies, have been conducted in order to explore environmental technological change. In the first two studies, the factors which affect environmental technological change in a production system have been identified. In the two subsequent studies the change processes as such were studied, leading to an increased understanding of how the production system and temporal dimensions influence the change processes. The studies conducted and the results are presented in six appended papers.