dr.ir. W. Haanstra (Willem)

Willem is an Assistant Professor in the chair of Asset Management & Maintenance Engineering at the Engineering Technology faculty of the University of Twente.

Willem’s research broadly focuses on Life Cycle Engineering, an engineering perspective that can best be described as the assessment and improvement of the entire life cycle of products and physical systems, to make them more sustainable with respect to people, planet, and profit.

Relevant research areas include Sustainable product and capital asset design; Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) for evaluating environmental and social impacts; Life Cycle Costing and Life Cycle Valuation (LCC and LCV) for assessing financial viability and value creation; Maintenance Engineering methods for optimizing reliability, availability, functionality and extending lifespans; The Circular Economy for organizing closed material and re-use cycles and supply chains at the end-of-life; And strategic decision-making as part of Asset Management. 

As a researcher with a background in Industrial Design Engineering, Willem likes to bridge the worlds of theory and practice by asking and answering ‘how can?’ type questions, often in close collaboration with partners from industry. Previous collaborations include partners from the manufacturing, energy, and transportation sectors.


Other roles:

• Coordinator of the MEO specialisation
  
• Chair of the Optimus Association

Organisations

• Faculty of Engineering Technology (ET), Asset Management & Maintenance Engineering (AMME)