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R. Pamminger, S. Glaser, W. Wimmer, G. Podhradsky:
"Guideline development to design modular products that meet the needs of circular economy";
Talk: Going Green Care Innovation, Wien; 2018-11-26 - 2018-11-29.

The intended paper presents the development of a guideline on how to design a modular product concept for smart mobile devices to meet the needs of Circular Economy.
First the D4R-Modularity was defined. Usually, smart mobile devices get defective caused by a failure or damage of only one single part, although all other parts are still working. These parts could serve more than one product lifetime. To continue the reuse of those parts, mixing different end-of-life strategies in one product is needed.
The resulting design process shown in the guideline is divided into five tasks: The definition of an adequate main CE-strategy of the product, the development of an appropriate business model, the definition of CE-strategies of subassemblies, parts the definition and the actual design of modules. For these steps useful tools and methods are given to support the development of a product concept.
The case study in this paper is a "Phillips Digital Voice Recorder". The modular product concept of the digital voice recorder, together with a circular business model, aims at extending the lifetime of the whole product, the lifetime of different modules and supports efficient material recycling. The case study indicates that economic advantages as well as reduced environmental impacts can be achieved with applying the proposed guideline for modular products.

smart mobile devices, circular economy, sustainable product development, D4R, modular product design, reuse, remanufacture, repair, environmental assessment

https://publik.tuwien.ac.at/files/publik_282332.pdf