Abstract
The linear economic model behind contemporary product lifecycle representations contradicts planetary boundaries and the idea of sustainability. At the same time, Circular Economy (CE) driven models lack consideration of profound technological insights. Based on observations in research and the application of projects of different industries, a quantitative and qualitative literature analysis is applied to identify both strengths and shortcomings of current lifecycle models. These findings are used to create lifecycle model portfolios and to derive a generic Product Lifecycle model (gPLC). The gPLC is validated by three industrial cases based on collaborative research projects. In practice, resource and energy consumption as well as waste production and emissions can be minimized with the help of established methods not only by economists, but also by engineers. Transparency of material and information circularity practically implies the opportunity to implement, for instance, Minimum Viable Products and DevOps approaches. The originality of the gPLC is characterized by three main aspects: first, material and information flows of multi-disciplinary product–service systems are recognized as the foundation for a modern CE; second, a differentiation between product classes and instances is elaborated to stimulate sustainable design of material core products and digital CE business models; and third, the stakeholder perspective is expanded from manufacturer and consumer/user to further perspectives, such as recycler and society.
Highlights
Perspectives cover, for instance, digital business models based on fundamentals of data science, smart manufacturing and Integrated Product Development as well as Product and System Lifecycle Management (PLM/SysLM)
The primary perspective is based on the intrinsic lifecycle view of the Product Creation process from product ideas resulting from strategic planning to going through engineering, realization into operation and decommissioning
Transferring the analytic perspective of the portfolios into a design oriented one, the results presented in Section 3.2 represent the basis of the generic Product Lifecycle model (gPLC)
Summary
Circular Economy (CE) was established as a term to represent the vision of treating circularity as a business opportunity, proposed in the early 1990s [1] and evolved throughout decades [2,3]. All of these studies and publications are focused on specific aspects and perspectives. Nunez-Cacho et al [7] provide a valuable perspective on CE challenges and opportunities for family-owned enterprises In all of these studies, the intrinsic perspective of Product Creation is not elaborated. The benefits created over years of engineering design research and corresponding practical outcomes established in production companies are not utilized
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