Impact of the implementation of Design for Circular Economy features on the product development process

Abstract

The transformation from a linear to a circular economy seems to be the right way to cope with rising resource consumption by a growing economy. One fundamental aspect to achieve this transition is the development of circular products themselves. Characteristics of circular products are already discussed in academia and often condensed in certain DfX-approaches, known as Design for Circular Economy. Such guidelines often provide general advice for developers rather than contain underlying methodical support to actually implement these criteria. Therefore, this contribution investigates the impact of circular design criteria implementation on the development process, thus uncovering the potential fields of action for methodical support of circular product design development.

Circularity in product engineering – towards a forward-looking approach across product generations

“…In literature, methods for design for recycling, approaches to the design of repairable and maintainable systems as well as the consideration of product-service systems are currently most relevant (Aguiar et al, 2022). In connection with the product engineering process, previous studies have mainly focused on the effects of circularity on only one product generation without taking the development of product in generations explicitly into account (Gräßler and Hesse, 2022;Becker et al, 2019;Hollander et al, 2017;Breimann et al, 2023;Stölzle et al, 2023). Hence, current implementation and operationalization as well as model-theoretical support in product engineering for an effective cross-generational approach is limited (Dokter et al, 2020).…”