Architecting for Sustainability: Bridging Business, Technology, and Organization in High-Tech Development

The high-tech manufacturing industry, dominated by large multinational corporations, faces pressure to innovate faster to remain competitive, producing more sophisticated machines with better performance and quality. In recent years, besides the push for better performance, sustainability and circularity have also gained importance, due to (1) regulations that are becoming broader in scope, stricter in thresholds, and more complex in requirements, (2) customer demands and expectations and (3) internal strategic objectives. Environmental Sustainability and Circularity (ESC) are recognized as strategic, long-term goals which require both technical and business model innovations. Considering the long development cycles and lifespans of complex industrial machines, sustainability and circularity must be addressed early in the architecting process to prepare for future regulatory and market demands. In this report, we present an architecting framework developed in close collaboration with Canon Production Printing R&D department. It supports early-stage system architecting for a high-tech production machine, and aligns business, technology and ESC innovation strategies. It defines the scope and acts as the decision support framework when considering improvements for future machine generations. We provide a multi-perspective modelling approach:
- Business perspective models the ecosystem (network) of collaborating businesses and ESC-related actors. It is modelled from the viewpoint of the architect’s own company (typically a high-tech manufacturer), and its role in the ecosystem.
- (Technical) architecture perspective captures the trade-offs among top-level system qualities when introducing ESC improvements. It suports structured exploration of how technology innovations influence both value creation and sustainability outcomes.
- Organizational perspective reflects the roles and governance structures involved in ESC-related decision-making.
The perspectives are interconnected, so that changes in one perspective directly influence other perspectives, enabling holistic approach. The framework is designed for collaborative use by systems architects, domain experts, business and organizational stakeholders. By integrating diverse perspectives and modelling approaches, it enables joint exploration of alternatives, transparent trade-off analysis, and alignment of technical decisions with business goals and environmental targets. This holistic approach ensures that critical interdependencies are addressed early, reducing risk and supporting the design of future-ready, sustainable system architectures.