Product design in Circular Manufacturing Systems

The transition towards a circular economy has become inevitable to mitigate the challenges of resource scarcity and resource price volatility, as well as ensure sustainable development. In contrast to the take-make-waste approach of today’s manufacturing systems, it is essential to implement Circular Manufacturing Systems (CMS) that are designed intentionally for closing the loop of products/components preferably in their original form, through multiple lifecycles. To implement CMS, product design plays a crucial role.

In the CMS approach, the entire life of a product is divided into multiple lives of a predetermined period (time or performance). After each designed lifecycle, the products are taken back for remanufacturing to bring the performance of the products back to the original specifications or upgrade to new specifications. This means, in principle already in the design phase product designers should have a clear plan regarding which complements of the product should be reused, replaced or upgraded in each of these predefined lifecycles.

In this docent lecture, you will be introduced to CMS and a methodological approach to designing products for multiple lifecycles to implement CMS.

The docent's presentation is open to the public. No registration is required.