By 2050, the Netherlands aims to achieve a climate-neutral society, however over 90% of buildings currently use natural gas or fossil fuel oil as their main resource of energy. To align with this goal, the Dutch energy company is taking measures to phase out natural gas and promote district heating. This research outlines a strategic path for the energy company to connect existing residential areas to district heating, utilizing a combination of roadmapping and the double diamond process model.

The initial phase involved stakeholder and competitor analysis, along with qualitative research through interviews with the energy company employees. Housing categories were established and prioritized, while the identified problems were refined. Additional interviews were conducted to look into the desirability of the to be developed solution.

The subsequent phase involved individual brainstorming and various workshops, utilizing different methods to select and further develop the most promising solutions. Roadmaps were created, outlining strategic directions and required activities. Simultaneously, a future vision is formulated through strategic trend scanning and clustering, providing a long-term perspective and comprehensive understanding of the broader picture of the energy business in 2050.

This study suggests the energy company to focus on five new innovations. All innovations propose the use of either new HIU’s or ways of connecting district heating to the HIU. These solutions combined have the maximum potential of connecting 67.2 percent of the buildings.

Furthermore, the recommendation was made that, to meet future customer needs, the energy company should transition from their current role of organizing the energy transition to becoming a provider of knowledge and expertise.

Lastly, it was found that to overcome challenges in adopting district heating, the energy company should improve their communication about their process, progress, and the benefits of district heating to the residents.

This report covers the development of the Blade Barrier: A sound barrier constructed using decommissioned wind turbine blades.
The ever-growing wind industry faces a composite waste problem. Wind turbine blades only last a few decades, and are difficult and therefore not economically desirable to recycle.
One proposed solution to this issue, is to repurpose the blades. Over the last years, several small-scale projects (such as playgrounds and urban furniture) have been realised that show how these high-end objects can serve new purposes successfully.
As the wind industry has grown exponentially over the last two decades, the resulting composite waste stream is expected to follow this same growth in the coming decades. For this reason, more impactful solutions are required.
To this end, the Blade Barrier is proposed by Blade Made, a spinoff startup from Superuse Studios. A roadside sound barrier has the potential to incorporate a large number of blades into its construction, and extend their life-in-service for another two to five decades, simultaneously eliminating the need for virgin materials.
The blades represent the starting point of the project, while the sound barrier is the final goal. The project is about connecting these two points through various research and design methods. Analysing the blades offers an understanding of the opportunities and limitations of the material, while research into sound barrier design yields insights into what makes a well-performing barrier. Throughout the project, the expertise of experts has been consulted to be able to expand this understanding and make well-grounded design decisions.
Based on this research a design vision is formulated, focussing on aesthetics, circularity and scalability. After the creation of three concepts, the idea for a green urban corridor was selected. This concept has the potential to transcend the simple idea of a sound barrier, and fulfil multiple purposes. It could offer a cleaner and more biodiverse urban area, and create an enjoyable surrounding on the resident side of the barrier.
Through an iterative process, this concept was further developed. The result is a design that is adaptive to the availability of blades and the requirements of the barrier location. Acoustic simulations are used to validate the performance of the design, and physical prototyping steps were taken in order to elaborate upon the production process. Vegetation is incorporated into the design to enhance its aesthetics and acoustics, and to stimulate biodiversity.
The design is applied to a location in Rotterdam to show how it integrates within the urban environment. The flexibility of the design enables it to be constructed in various different locations with varying types of blades. This way, it offers a solution to the blade waste problem anywhere on the planet.
The design was presented to the wind industry at the 2022 WindEurope conference in Bilbao. The design was received well there, and several parties are currently in touch with Blade Made to explore the possibilities for the construction of a Blade Barrier.
To this end, the report concludes with several recommendations toward the realisation of the design.

This project proposes a no-waste, reusable packaging approach for networking equipment used in KPN’s business-to-business market. The goal of this project was to create a first proof of concept of reusable packaging in KPN’s logistical and manual processes, and therefore create a stepping stone towards further scaling-up reusable packaging across their operation.

KPN, the leading telecom company in the Netherlands, wants to accelerate the journey to become near 100% circular by 2025, in which the reduction of packaging waste plays an important role. To reduce this to virtually zero, a reusable packaging approach is suggested. Additionally, research showed that the return logistics of a number of B2B services are hindered due to a lack of packaging, which causes product damage and a delayed turnaround time.

With insight from the research a packaging prototype was designed and developed to be tested in a first pilot. A ‘ reusable messenger bag’ concept was selected, as it is durable, relatively cheap, size efficient and an already known, and valued packaging concept among mechanics and the refurbishment partner. To support the distribution of the packaging in an effective way, a logistic concept is proposed. This mechanic-centred system architecture ensures the availability of packaging at all times, potentially solving the return issues that were found in the research.

In the pilot, the accessibility of logistics, workflow of employees and the functionality of the product are tested in an actual order of a popular B2B service of KPN. The pilot resulted in a successful proof of concept and a first stepping stone towards the implementation of a zero-waste, reusable packaging approach for KPN. With a small-scale, technical implementation of this concept, it was shown that reusable packaging has the potential to not only reduce packaging waste, but also increase the workflow of involved stakeholders, improve the return logistics of electronics and therefore also reduce costs. This resulted in a positive and profitable business case for further development of this concept.

The biggest limitation was the small and narrow scope of testing (n=1). This made it difficult to actually validate if the return logistics were improved by a reusable packaging, as logistics manifest itself at scale. As a further roll-out of the concept shows to be interesting for KPN, the first next step would be to scale up the testing over the entire VPN service (±1000 orders yearly) to validate the logistic concept and functionality of the product.

Although biocomposites have been around for some years now, their use is still far from mainstream. Yet, the material properties of biocomposites and their current applications show a lot of potential for more sustainable, lightweight and structural applications in many industries. Long fibre biocomposites show good specific properties and offer unique benefits like high vibration damping. Furthermore, they have a significantly lower environmental impact than aluminium and synthetic composites. This project was commissioned by NPSP, a company with over 20 years of experience in the biocomposite industry. They experience a rising interest in biocomposites in recent years, but large scale applications are still rare. This project aimed to explore the potential of long fibre biocomposite applications in the mobility and transport industry. These industries feel the need to become more sustainable and the characteristics of long fibre biocomposites show other potential benefits. After initial material research was performed, nine weeks of project acquisition followed. Six companies participated in a short track of a maximum of two meetings to explore biocomposite potential for their corporation. The results of this process are analysed to obtain insights into what boundaries and opportunities companies see in biocomposites. From the results can be concluded that interest in biocomposites is present in these industries. The potential benefits of saving weight and opting for a more sustainable material are acknowledged by most companies. The main boundaries currently preventing companies to apply biocomposites are the high perceived risk of applying the material, high costs, a challenging end of life scenario and lack of more ‘off the shelf’ semi-manufactured biocomposite products. The current position of biocomposites can be referred to as the so-called ‘chasm’ in the technology adoption lifecycle (figure 1). At this point, an innovation is accepted in a few small niche markets but needs the acceptance of more mature companies and industries to grow or even survive. Assumed at the start of this project was that larger scale applications would lead biocomposites across the chasm. So after ten weeks of project acquisition, one case was selected to continue with in the second phase of the project. The process of this project showed that material innovation is a slow process. Reaching a collaboration and develop a biocomposite application in a half year project proved to be optimistic. Since the selected case showed slow progress, more effort could be spent on improving the credibility of biocomposites at NPSP and evaluating new material development opportunities. These efforts led to the development of a website proposal, a new sample set and three development opportunities to enable widespread adoption of long fibre biocomposites.

Dealing with agriculture is challenging for companies like Barilla because of several uncontrollable factors, such as climate change.
Purchasing from the spot market constitutes a high economical risk for the company, which decided, in 2010, to launch the Barilla Sustainable Farming Projects.

Barilla Sustainable Farming projects support and promote the adoption of more efficient and sustainable agricultural practices while increasing the economic advantages of farmers. Accordingly, farmers sign agricultural contracts with the company, that in exchange for the security to buy the product ask for sustainable practices' application.

The Barilla Sustainable Farming project spread throughout the Italian farmers successfully; then, the company decided to expand these sustainable projects abroad. One of the two scopes of this graduation project is to export the Barilla Sustainable Farming projects abroad to increase the number of contracted farmers further.

However, despite many contracted farmers, Barilla still faces a significant issue: the tools and the Sustainable Farming practices developed by the company are not understood and thus adopted by farmers holistically. The scenario creates relevancy for this graduation project that aimed to apply the design methodologies to find a creative solution.
Then, the problem is defined in exporting the Sustainable Farming projects abroad while convincing farmers to adopt the Sustainable Guidelines developed by the company.

The project started from in-depth research on the countries' agricultural systems where Barilla could export the Sustainable Farming Projects and passed through semi-structured interviews with farmers to gain insights on possible design directions to convince them to apply the sustainable practices.

Then, with a conjoint definition on the two pieces of research (one for each scope), the final design direction was defined: creating an educational framework that aims to create engagement, understanding, and participation on the Barilla Sustainable Guidelines. Accordingly, the solution is a platform that allows farmers to learn, via different activities, all the company's guidelines, which should be applied while cultivating.

In the end, in compliance with the educational model, the company's interest would be relevant in implementing the Barilla Sustainable Farming in countries with a rearward agricultural level. Therefore, the most relevant countries have a lower educational and technological level among the studied countries. Consequently, after developing the educational framework, namely how farmers should learn the guidelines, a roadmap has been developed for implementing the educational framework in two different countries: Turkey and Russia.

Besides the academic core of the project, the main goal is to create a creative direction to investigate new possibilities further to expand the Barilla Sustainable Projects abroad. Then, the primary aspiration of the project for an actual application would be to create inspiration to explore new possible strategies Barilla may consider in the future.

The aim of this thesis is to implement knowledge of a user's experience into vehicle design. Picnic is developing a new delivery vehicle and this project will explore what could be improved on the current ePV for the ePV2. The target user, the Picnic Runner is researched thoroughly to find where the ePV design lacks positive user experience. Problems around the current vehicle were assessed within the research stage with consideration of known foreseen problems with the new design. The Runner’s perception of safety was a found issue and a design was a concept created to help them work safer. This project is concluded with a design proposal that is grounded via research and tested prototypes.

The research phase starts with an extensive literature study. To this end, a research question was drawn up, which reads as follows: What possibilities does Additive Manufacturing (AM) offer in airworthy aircraft part production and in what way can suitable parts be selected and redesigned? The most interesting findings from this literature study are as follows. The 3 most frequently mentioned benefits that AM offers the aviation industry is the ability to produce complex geometry, lightweight part production and reduce material waste. Moreover, each conserved kg saves US$3000 on an annual basis in fuel. Designated certification standards or criteria applicable for AM parts do not exist yet. Besides, material plays an overwhelming role in the selection of an AM machine. The current use in the studied literature were mainly certified metal AM parts, all were critical components from the engine or wing. Last, the production of plastic tooling is low-hanging fruit, which means that all the benefits that AM offers can also be used here and no certification is required. The result from the literature study was very educational and broad. However, not all found can be used immediately for KLM’s purpose. As a result, in the continuation of the project are some topics which were not applicable, re-examined and elaborated for KLM’s use. This involved firstly investigating the European regulatory bodies, EASA. Indeed, there are no standards or regulations for the use of AM in aviation yet. However, we know that 3D printed and certified exists. EASA explains the importance of repeatability of the production process and traceability of the material quality is the most important in general for production in the aviation. When we talk about producing and certifying parts, the certificates DOA and POA of EASA are of importance. With a DOA, an organization is allowed to design new parts within a specific category. While a POA allows an organization to produce new parts within a specific category. KLM holds of a DOA in aircraft cabin parts, but doesn’t hold a POA yet. Next are the applicable benefits AM offer applicable for KLM researched. This resulted in the top 5 of faster lead time, integrating assemblies, reducing weight, customization and reducing purchase costs. In the same way is the current use of AM by direct competitors of KLM investigated. Interesting to see that all these parts were plastic while most examples in the literature were about metal parts. With this outcome and the area in which KLM is allowed to design with its DOA is the cabin. An investigation has been done into which plastic printers may actually be used in the aviation industry to produce certified parts, due to the fact the cabin mainly consists of plastic parts. The result was only SLS and FDM. Because these 2 processes only have material that meets the general cabin material requirements applicable in the aviation. Thereafter, a list of suitable components for AM was drawn up at 3 different times with different techniques executed during these moments. In addition is a very elaborated trade-off table constructed to select part with the largest potential for each of the prior found top 5 benefits AM offers KLM. The list of criteria of the trade-off table is based on previous AM benefit consequence relations found. All criteria are rated by 8 KLM experts to provide objective weights. This resulted into the selection of 5 products for each benefit. The design phase When entering the design phase with the 5 selected products, it was realized that some of the selected were categories instead of specific products. A new route has been created for this to easily find partner numbers for each category and compile real parts. AM benefit = Selected component Faster lead time = Zodiac seat armrest Integrating assemblies* = Toilet paper holder* Reduce weight = Recaro bi-fold seat tables Customization = Boeing window shades Reduce purchase costs = Zodiac business class cabin bumpers Next is a standard template created which serves during the redesign process of each part and ensures structure but also that every concept is equally worked out. The template consists determining 4 comparison aspects, mind mapping, inspiration collage, idea sketching, CAD modeling, strength analysis and test on printability. The 4 comparison aspects create an overview on purchase price, lead time, weight and amount of parts between the original and redesigned parts. This overview easily displays whether an improvement or deterioration has been achieved with the redesign. The purchase price and weight are determined with a constructed formula. These formulas have been drawn up based on the ratio method. The lead time with an assumption, while the amount of parts can easily be counted in the CAD model. After this step is every redesign tested for strength with FEM analysis. This is done based on specific maximum use scenarios created for each component. The forces in these scenarios are determined by DINED, anthropometric database created by TU Delft. The strength analysis is highly important to validate and accept the determined comparison aspects for the redesigned parts. It can be shared that all components have passed the strength analysis. Similarly is testing on printability of a part very important. Even though all parts will be redesigned for AM, there may still be reasons why a component is not suitable for printing. It is best to remove these parts as quickly as possible. A method has been devised for this. Printability is related to 2 conditions, the function requi¬rements of the component and printer specifi¬cations. A list of function requirements are set up and linked to printer specifications of both FDM and SLS. When selecting the function requirements for the part, the limitations of the AM process will immediately be discovered which will serve to decide whether the part fits for AM or not. All 5 parts have been developed into concepts where according to determinations very large improvements have been made compared to the original part. The main target during development of the 5 concepts was the AM benefit this part was selected for. While other advantages of AM are side concerns. One thing is certain, there can be lots gained even with the side issues. Using the elaborate trade-off table constructed previously for selecting the most pro¬missing part to further develop. This resulted in the selection of the Zodiac seat armrest. The final phase During the final phase is the seat armrest redesigned concept further optimized. A specific list of requirements has been constructed and fined tuned by KLM experts specialized in airworthiness and seats. Consequently is the AM process and material selected, with which the strength analysis of the optimized component has been carried out. The process is SLS and material is PA2241FR. The maximum usage scenario has been changed to an extreme scenario where the size of the prior force exerted on the component in the concept phase is doubled for the final phase. The optimized component even passed this analysis. After this the printability test was performed for SLS and are the 4 comparison aspects determined. Next is the component is checked on its precision of dimensions and real fit on the assembly by producing tangible prototypes. Iterating the design in the real world and real use of context resulted into finalizing the CAD model. With the final redesigned armrest being pro¬duced in the eventual real specifications, could this SLS printed part be used to validate the previously determined comparison aspects with the eventual real aspects. This results in 97% reduction in lead time, 37% reduction in purchase costs and 58% in weight reduction when compared with the original part. This shows that the main benefit, lead time, the armrest is selected for is achieved. Besides, in case all current armrest will be replaced on the 777 and 787 fleet by the final seat armrest redesign, will result in a po¬tential fuel cost reduction of $4.665.000 on an annual base. After all the previous steps in design, test and maturation in the process, we have now fully completed the development of the new part and printability has been proven. The last final step is making a statement on meeting previously set requirements and whether this part has a chance of obtaining a certification. This certification should declare the part being airworthy and therefore authorized to fly. To be able to make a substantiated statement, 7 experts actively on this topic were consulted. All have been shown the list of requirements and has the issue whether or not having a chance of success at KLM and obtaining certification for this redesign has been asked. We can conclude from the conversations and discussions held. That the results together prove the armrest meet previously set requirements and provide enough confidence to conclude that the new armrest will get certified and thus succeeded. The most important thing is that the operator (KLM) accepts the new part and expiry of the ETSO certificate. And the component must be proven for flammability and the moment of breaking will have sharp edges. We know that this has happened before, which generates sufficient confidence. All in all, the results from the discussions held with 7 experts together with the real comparison aspects of the SLS printed part shows that the project has led to an amazing and successful result.

|| BACKGROUND.
Nequi, a FinTech from Colombia, wants to be the digital bank of millennials. However, their most popular feature is cash withdrawals - hindering Nequi’s goal of a digital banking experience.

|| GOAL.
This project addressed the problem: “How to increase Nequi’s relevance in the quotidien life of its users?”

|| PROBLEM DEFINITION.
Field research revealed a country where 90% of all transactions are done in cash (in the Netherlands this is 45%) and where there is a cultural tendency not to trust banks. For many Colombians, cash is safer than cashless. How can Nequi thrive if no one trusts or accepts cashless payments?

|| APPROACH.
Instead of focusing on the user's individual experience with cashless, this project addressed the topic as a collective experience and focused on building an ecosystem for cashless payments.

|| SOLUTION.
Nequi-qui builds sellers’ trust about cashless and at the same time invites users to pay with Nequi - creating a Nequ -ecosystem in the quotidian of its users.