Abstract

AbstractProduct eco-design includes several methodologies aimed at supporting companies in the development of sustainable products. Currently, this theme is assuming an important role in both the academia and industry worlds due to the increasing attention to environmental problems and the need for a transition toward circular economy business/organizational models. In this context, the present paper focuses on the industrial sector of espresso coffee machines manufacturing which has several unexploited potentialities. The analysis of the sector specificity (internal and external contexts), as well as of the product lifecycle allowed to define an eco-design framework to guide companies involved in the design and production of espresso coffee machines. Effective eco-design strategies should include the combined use of specific methods, tools and metrics to manage all the most important lifecycle phases (beginning of life, middle of life, end of life) during the design activities in order to set preventive actions that avoid future potential environmental impacts. Only in this way, the environmental and economic benefits of the circular economy paradigm (e.g. remanufacturing/reuse of selected components) can be practically exploited in real industrial contexts. The presented case studies confirmed that the application of design for disassembly rules positively contributes to increase the product performances during maintenance and end of life, while a re-design oriented to component modularity could be a key strategy to pursue remanufacturing for boilers, a key and expensive component included in espresso coffee machines.

Highlights

  • Eco-design includes a set of design methodologies that support technical departments in the development of sustainable products

  • The concept of circular economy (CE) acquired importance as a business/organizational model focused on the increasing of product lifetime, minimization of scraps/wastes, implementation of closed-loop end of life (EoL) scenarios [3]

  • One of the most widespread is design for disassembly (DfD), a target design methodology focused on the product disassembly, a preliminary but essential phase for both maintenance/repair of products during the use phase, and at the EoL, in order to favor the component reuse/remanufacturing and the material separation/recycling [6]

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Summary

Introduction

Eco-design includes a set of design methodologies that support technical departments in the development of sustainable products. Several key factors are forcing companies to launch in the market products with a minimized environmental load: new legislations, the opportunity to enlarge the market share, economic advantages, brand preservation, increasing environmental awareness of customers [1] This context stimulated the development of hundreds of general-purpose or sectorial eco-design methods and tools from both the scientific and industrial world [2]. Such approaches have a limited efficiency and only a transition to “preventive” actions can lead to full benefits of the CE paradigm [5] This is the main reason why in the last years the scientific community is increasingly focused on the proposal of design methodologies aimed at supporting the development of products that are easy to manage and recover at EoL.

Product Eco-Design for Coffee Machines
Case Studies
Conclusions
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