Institute for Integrated Quality Design

Founded in October 2015, the Institute for Integrated Quality Design (IQD) is a new interdisciplinary research institute at the intersection of management and engineering focusing on research and teaching in the areas of sustainability-oriented innovation, integrated quality management (systems) and design for circularity. Research and teaching is framed by the vision of a Circular Economy, a concept which proposes circular product design, processes and resource flows as strategies to overcome some of today's most pressing challenges, such as resource scarcity, dependence on fossil fuels, decreasing product quality (and respective lifetimes), waste and related environmental pollution. Against this background, the institute’s mission is to better understand the development and diffusion of product-service systems with superior technical, environmental and social quality regarding the full life-cycle (resources, production, use, post/re-use) – or even multiple life-cycles (i.e. circularity) – and how this can be enabled by integrated management systems and, more generally, organisational change and transformation. The institute is jointly financed by Quality Austria (Quality Austria - Trainings, Zertifizierungs und Begutachtungs GmbH), the State of Upper Austria and Johannes Kepler University Linz.