On March 18, the project team held a seminar at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia entitled “Economic sustainability assessment: an open question,” aimed at students of the Product and Process Sustainability course of the Master's Degree in Management Engineering.

The meeting was part of the university's educational program with the aim of exploring the topic of economic sustainability, an aspect that is often less explored than environmental and social sustainability, but central to the activities of the REDiRECT project. The seminar offered students a structured and critical view of a complex field, highlighting both established approaches and open questions.

Starting with the definition of economic sustainability, the team introduced Life Cycle Costing (LCC), one of the most widely used methodologies for assessing the economic impacts throughout the life cycle of products and processes. The tool was presented, highlighting its role in decision-making processes and its use in industrial and research contexts.

After the theoretical overview, the seminar focused on the operational application of Life Cycle Costing. Through examples and use cases, the main strengths of the methodology were illustrated, such as its ability to support medium- to long-term assessments and to integrate direct and indirect costs. At the same time, some limitations were highlighted, particularly those related to data availability, basic assumptions, and the difficulty of representing complex and dynamic scenarios.

This critical analysis stimulated discussion with the students, emphasizing how the assessment of economic sustainability cannot be addressed with unambiguous or standardized tools, but requires flexible and contextualized approaches. The topic was then linked to the challenges addressed by the REDiRECT project, which aims to develop innovative solutions for the integrated assessment of sustainability.

In the final part of the seminar, the team presented some alternative and complementary proposals to Life Cycle Costing. These approaches, still under development, were introduced as possible methodological evolutions to overcome some of the critical issues that emerged and to improve the capacity for economic analysis in contexts of circular economy and process innovation.

These proposals will be further explored during the REDiRECT project and represent one of the areas of work on which future activities will focus. The seminar thus contributed to strengthening the dialogue between research and teaching, offering students critical reading tools useful for addressing the challenges of sustainability in engineering and management.

The seminar slides are available at the following link.