A methodical planning to enhance reutilisation potential in product design

Abstract

Applying appropriate designs to improve the opportunity of reutilisation is a proactive and essential way to minimise the environmental impacts stemming from the disposal of retired products and to reduce the pressure on extracting raw materials. To champion this concept for sustainability and practice for a closed-loop product life cycle, a proper tool is often a necessity, facilitating companies to make favorable design decisions and achieve desirable outcomes. In this paper, a methodically structured design planning approach is introduced to support the measure and enhancement of the reutilisation potential of products. The mechanism of this approach articulates the identification of reutilisation strategy at the system level with the reusability evaluation and configurations at the component level. The effect on waste reduction is assessed by estimating the consequent scrap rates of the components as well as the system. Finally, an example is provided to demonstrate the implementation of the approach.