Tobias Larsson

Professor Tobias C. Larsson (TCL), born 1972, got his PhD at Luleå University of Technology in 2001 within the area of simulation driven design within a product development context. The applications were within automotive, and high-speed train sector. Special emphasis was on multi-body dynamics and simulation driven design within a product development context.

The core of today is within Product-Service Systems Innovation where the focus is on developing methods and tools for engineering product development and simulation applications in industrial settings to support development of sustainable product-service systems (PSS) that should create value on the market. PSS puts the focus on the functional aspects of the development and drives the usually separated product and service development teams into a more concurrent way of working to ensure delivery of a life-cycle function. Value modelling and simulation, knowledge management, and innovation performance metrics when developing PSS is of extra interest in the research.

TCL is happy to contribute to companies and organizations that want to become more innovative, data-driven, and digitized to create the sustainable products and services of the future.

When companies are moving into a situation where they need to develop “greener” products and services in order to be sustainable, engineers involved in product development need to think about more choices all the time, sustainability being one of them. This means that the “engineers desktop” need to be updated with tools and methods to take into account life-cycle factors and sustainability, besides the traditional factors of product performance. The aim is to help research, prototype and implement this updated “engineering toolbox 2.0” for the engineer of the future.

TCL focus product-service system innovation, product development, engineering design and knowledge engineering principles in a design research quest to support the progress towards an “engineered sustainable future”.

TCL is currently supervising 12 PhD students and has examined several PhD’s (28) and licentiate (32) degrees. He has contributed in over 100 peer-reviewed publications within his research area. TCL has initiated and finalized several research projects. TCL was the main person behind the creation of the Faste Laboratory, a VINN Excellence Centre within product-service systems, and is the initiator and project leader in the KKS profile project “Model Driven Development and Decision Support” (2013-2018). He is co-founder of the Design for Wellbeing framework, a joint research project together with Stanford University, USA, and Hosei University, Japan, and have taken part in several European Union projects within aerospace sector (VIVACE 2004-2007, CRESCENDO 2009-2012).