- Circular product manufacturing aims to recover and reuse products, materials and components that have reached the end of their service life.
- Valuable components and materials with a high “residual value” can be recovered and re-used to make new products. These can then be re-sold to customers, generating more valuable revenue for reduced manufacturing costs and significantly less waste.
- Circular manufacture aims to recover and re-manufacture the same product but generating less waste. “Spiral” manufacture recognises the need for products to be kept up to date to meet changing market needs over multiple life cycles. There is therefore the need to design products to be regularly upgraded – emphatically NOT making the same thing again.
- There are challenges, including designing products for multiple life cycles, the need to satisfy regulators that safety and reliability have not been compromised, the cost of the recovery and remanufacturing operation and, crucially, the ability to recover useful quantities of usable products.
- The value to the business of recovered and reused products must be greater than the cost to the business of recovering and using them. If not, then the business will not be incentivised to make it work. Just as with Design for Manufacture and Assembly, Sustainable manufacture must systematically drive out efficiencies in all aspects of the circular process for it to work.
The Spiral Economy model is based on the Circular Economy model, but with the added dimension of time.
Products intended for reprocessing need to consider that the requirements for future products will have changed.
Each make / use / recover reprocess / reuse cycle will need to know which design elements are likely to need to be different next time around.
Colour? Display? Styling? Regulatory requirements? If these are likely to change, make provision in your design to change them.