D.3.4 Circular design methods

This report details the development, application and validation of circular design methods that can deal with multiple scenarios, with a concurrent focus on reuse, remanufacturing and recycling, and a long time-horizon. Its core focus is the validation of two methods: the Circular Product Readiness and Product Journey Map. It also presents the final version of all four design methods developed for the H2020 EU project ReCiPSS, that each in their unique way aim to support this transition: 1) Circular Product Readiness; 2) Product Journey Map; 3) Disassembly Map; 4) Co-creation Impact Model.

The first method, the Circular Product Readiness method, is used to monitor and steer the design process from a design management perspective, using a comprehensive set of indicators to assess a company’s readiness level to design circular products. A second level of this method consists of additional indicators from literature, to dive deeper in selected topics. The second method, the Product Journey Map, is a strategic design method that visualises the journey of a product throughout its lifetime and contains a product’s interaction with the various stakeholders to gain insights in opportunities to capture value. The third method, the Disassembly Map, is a method that gives a schematic representation of a product’s architecture with the goal to provide insight in the disassembly routes for its parts and optimise them for different R-strategies (i.e. repair, refurbishment, remanufacturing, etc.). And finally, the Co-creation Impact Model is a method that helps put co-creation into effective use in the process of shifting towards increased servitisation, by providing an overview of the impact of co-creation at different product-service system development phases.