Within integrated product and production development research, casestudies needto be performed for data gathering purposes. Today, there are two commonly used ways to perform this research; observingindustry projects orhaving the researchers perform the projects themselves. The first option can pose data access and IPRissues, and the second optioncomes with biasing risks. Another approach is to work with studentcaseprojects, givingstudents interesting projects and findinga solution to mediate both data gathering opportunity and biasing risks. This approach has been tested at Linköping University, with students performing projects in the Vinnovafunded Production 2030 –Large Scale Production in Mixed Materials project. Two larger student case projects have been performed on the topic of material substitution and mixed material solutions within the automotive industry.In this paper, the method used to include student projects is presented along with identified benefits and drawbacks. Including student case projects in research have shown to be beneficial in research on processes, projects and methodology, but needs to be complemented by data fromindustry projects and the researcher ́s own work within integrated product and production development in order to create a more reliable analysis with high level of detail.