Design for cascading applications reuse – understandings of an emerging end-of-use strategy and propositions for its implementation

Abstract

This paper focuses on an innovative end-of-use strategy: repurposing, defined as a manufacturing process through which products nearing their end-of-life are reused in different applications. We refer to this strategy as cascading applications reuse (CAR). The main purpose of CAR is the preservation of the added-value of such products. The objective of this research is to provide a clear vision to decision-makers and design teams about the repurposing strategy and to guide them to integrate it during the upstream stages of the design process. To do so, three contributions are presented. First, CAR offers are characterised from a design perspective. Second, a double-usage CAR life cycle is explained. Differences with traditional strategies are highlighted. Third, three design tools are explored and modified to facilitate design steps in a repurposing perspective. Two central case studies, focussing on lithium-ion batteries, have been investigated during our research to build and validate the contributions. The first concerns applications related to electric building site machineries repurposed into forklift trucks. The second concerns the transformation of batteries from electric vehicles to stationary applications. Working sessions have been conducted with multiple stakeholders (decision-makers, design teams, logisticians, recycler, etc.).