Modern manufacturing for global markets tends to homogenize material culture through its centralized production and divisive production process. In contrast, craft practices usually have a strong local identity through their application of holistic making practices, context-based knowledge, culturally specific responses and community-centred production. This form of locally-based, customizable and responsive production is discussed here in terms of its relationship to sustainability and as a promising direction for future manufacturing. Despite the potentially strong relationship between craft and sustainability, there is still only limited research exploring this relationship and how craft can more effectively contribute to contemporary industry and life in general. This paper begins by developing an understanding of the relationship between craft and sustainability. From this, we identify: 1) barriers to craft's development for sustainability, and 2) potential directions to which design can contribute. We then provide an analysis of the current state of crafts in the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) and identify the challenges and potential for design interventions in this region.

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This paper presents an approach to identify opportunities to develop sustainable Product Service Systems (PSS) involving Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). The purpose of the research is to build understanding of how the integration of product and service design and the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) can contribute to identify opportunities to develop sustainable PSS involving SMEs. In order to develop the approach, research with 16 Colombian Manufacturing SMEs was carried out. A reference model and four generic types of PSS according to the relationships between product and service design and ICT are used to analyse the data. Finally, the possibility of extending the approach into a general framework to work with other industries is discussed.

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