Riding the Digital Product Life Cycle Waves towards a Circular Economy

Abstract

Data driven organizations such as Amazon and Uber have raised the capabilities and expectations of customers to a new level by providing faster and cheaper products and services. The reviewed literature documented that 10–15% of the online products are returned and in many cases such products are not shelf-ready due to product obsolescence or slight wear and tear, thereby reducing profits. Many of these products are disposed of in landfills. There were very few publications that documented how integration of digitized product life cycle into the business model improves product returns and the remanufacturing processes. As societies continue on, environmentally responsible, digital journeys with connected devices and people, reverse supply chains and remanufacturing will play increased importance in fulfilling customers expanded expectations. The networks are evolving, wherein, data are collected from all phases of the product lifecycles from design, prototype, manufacturing, usage aftermarket, returns remanufacturing and recycling. The objective of this paper’s authors was to describe how all phases of product life cycles can be digitized to improve global reverse supply chains and remanufacturing. The authors performed a literature review and developed case studies to document current and to predict future transformational waves that will become increasingly used in many industrial sectors. The authors made recommendations about the importance of improved product design, reduced processing costs and increased use of remanufactured products based upon data on returns to manufacturers and service providers. This paper contributes to research by providing a framework of a digitized product life cycle integrated with the business process phases including remanufacturing and supported with real-world case studies for practitioners and academicians. The authors outlined potential future topics for academic researchers and practitioners, for expanding usage of digital tools in real-time predictive analytics to improve remanufacturing system’s efficiency and quality.

A framework of digital technologies for the circular economy: Digital functions and mechanisms

“…For instance, DTs can detect a product's wear by means of embedded sensors in the products or through data shared by customers (Kerin & Pham, 2019). Track and trace provide insights into the availability and condition of used products and spare parts (Ingemarsdotter et al, 2020; Subramoniam et al, 2021). The information can enable companies to make personalized remanufacturing processes that minimizes wastes and material consumption (Moreno et al, 2019), to optimize process efficiency as referred elsewhere (Kerin & Pham, 2020; Zacharaki et al, 2020), or to secure the spare parts sourcing, which can often be a significant challenge for industry (Dev et al, 2020; Garrido‐Hidalgo et al, 2020; Rosa et al, 2020).…”

The Role of Digitalization in Facilitating Circular Economy

“…Another important and currently limited component is efficient manufacturing systems with real-time monitoring and control capabilities, which could lead to less resource use, precise troubleshooting, improved maintenance capabilities, and higherquality outputs. In addition to manufacturing, smart remanufacturing systems to support product-as-service systems (PSS) and recirculation of resources were also reviewed (Kerin and Pham Duc, 2020;Subramoniam et al, 2021). Empirical demonstrations of smart reconfiguration of disassembly lines of electric and electronic equipment waste were made using IoT systems and digital twins, and an interactive electronics waste management reverse supply chain structure was proposed (Shevchenko et al, 2021).…”

Value-retained vs. impacts avoided: the differentiated contributions of remanufacturing, refurbishment, repair, and reuse within a circular economy

“…For example, despite the fact that remanufacturing has been studied extensively [40,53], and continues to be a central aspect of advanced engineering and digital transformation research [22,31,39,47], VRPs (including remanufacturing) are often lumped together under generic 'reuse' strategies within sustainable materials management hierarchies programming [11,43,60]. Interest in unpacking this generalization has been increasing, i.e., recent work by Subramoniam et al [55] explores how the digitization of a product's different life cycle stages (e.g., development, introduction, growth, maturity, and decline [48], may enable improved effectiveness and efficiency of the reverse supply chain via strategic life cycle based interventions.…”