Modular products: Smartphone design from a circular economy perspective

Abstract

Currently a range of modular smartphones is emerging, including the Fairphone 2, Puzzlephone, Google's Project ARA, RePhone, LG's G5 and others. In an industry of perceived short product cycles a modular design concept might become crucial for longer product lifetimes. The paper provides an overview on latest product developments and assesses these against environmental criteria, including longevity, durability, upgradeability, repairability and Design for Recycling and Reuse. Modular product design however is not necessarily the most sustainable design option. Modularity first of all means inevitably more material consumption, as additional sub-housing and universal connectors are required, partly also a larger total product volume to allow for incorporation of the maximum potential configuration and anticipated future technologies. This has to pay off through a significantly longer use of individual devices and modules. It depends furthermore on the user, if the intended replacement of broken modules by new ones helps to keep whole devices in use much longer or if the user just replaces individual modules much more frequently to keep pace with latest technology features

Blockchain based Distributed Cloud Fog Platform for IoT Supply Chain Management

“…This is the reason why we provide feedback from consumer to producer (farms), transformer (firms), packaging, transport and distribution (from warehouses) modules. The idea is to support modular design (mix & match modularity) as a design approach of the circular economy [25]. Modularity of the supply chain fits and allow excellent usage of the block-chain technology [26] which could be considered as decentralized, distributed database where all transactions from all modules are recorded, replicated and available for all modules and consumers.…”

“…The concept of circular economy [25] (introduced in the 60's) is rapidly gaining attention as a way of decoupling growth from resource constraints.The proposed supply chain platform in this research will accelerate product development, expand into new markets, leverage partnerships, and mitigate unbalanced distribution of available resources. In particular the platform will allow us to promote and support innovation across the components of the supply chains to enable faster new product development, more effective market expansion, better understand of customer needs and building a human-centred supply chain giving values to waste achieving sustainable development as the greatest challenges of the 21st century.…”

Information System for Trust Food Supply Management

“…-By using the circular economy model [7] and by following the shelf life deadline of the food products on the basis of trusted information from the information system to provide the trusted food waste reduction. [6] food metrics and bridge the gap between the subjective consumer perception and objective quality standards and models in order to provide trusted estimation of the level of consumer's satisfaction.…”

Towards a sustainable business model for smartphones: Combining product-service systems with modularity

“…The second challenge in applying modular smartphones to the large scale relates to the consumers and their behaviour towards maintaining devices for long periods of time. A modular design demands more critical raw materials for production than a non-modular one due to the need of connectors [41]. Besides the environmental impact in the production phase, this incurs into higher production costs, which is translated into products that are more expensive.…”

“…In terms of the environment, MPD increases manufacturing efficiency, reduces inventory cost and addresses the demand towards mass customization [28]. Furthermore, one important benefit of a modular smartphone is the extended durability [41]. Thus, considering that is possible to upgrade or change the specific module when needed, the consumer is able to keep a modular smartphone for longer than with a traditional model, avoiding or lengthening to the maximum the device's obsolescence.…”