Session: DFMLC-05-01: Special Session: Design Tool Showcase & Design for Manufacturing and the Life Cycle in response to COVID-19

Paper Number: 69704

Start Time: August 19, 11:10 AM

69704 - Circularity Indicators and Tools for Product Design: A Web-Based Visualization and Selection Tool 

A new add-on for facilitating and monitoring circular product design is made available on the c-indicators web-platform: https://c-indicators.000webhostapp.com/index.php. This online platform, including two web-based tools – the C-Indicators Advisor and the Circularity Potential Indicator – has been first introduced during the 2019 edition of the Design Tool Showcase [1]. Meanwhile, the number of circular economy indicators (covering different aspects and scales of the circular economy) continued to rise, leading both to utility and fuzziness for industrial practitioners. Among this plethora of recently developed circularity indicators, it is key to identify the ones that are particularly adapted to be deployed during the design process to foster design for circularity, as a means of operationalizing sustainability in product development. While a previous contribution started to investigate the potential value of applying four circular economy-related indicators during the design process to augment the circularity potential of products [2], the present research is more systemic and identified twelve product-focused c-indicators coming with computational tools that could be insightful and practical during the design process.

 

To support designers and engineers in the selection of adequate product-centric c-indicators, these twelve ad hoc c-indicators are mapped on a generalized five-step engineering design process (x-axis), including: (i) requirements definition, (ii) conceptual design, (iii) detailed design, (iv) designs comparison, and (v) product monitoring and communication. Also, these c-indicators and their associated assessment tools are ranked according to their level of complexity or time required to be computed, in order to further inform designers or engineers, who might use such tools for the first time, on their usability and user-friendliness. To facilitate the identification, selection, and deployment of ad hoc product-level c-indicators, a visualization web-based tool is proposed, mapping on an interactive two-dimensional chart these c-indicators. This web-based application has been developed using the JavaScript library React. The user interface and interactive chart have been implemented using Plotly: http://circulareconomyindicators.com/design.php. This web-based app is expected to be linked with an updated version of the database of circular economy indicators from the C-Indicators Advisor, as well as to provide and display infoboxes (and use cases, if any) for selected c-indicators.

 

During the 2021 Design Tool Showcase, concrete examples – using e.g., the Circularity Potential Indicator (CPI), the Circular Economy Indicator Prototype (CEIP), or the (Circularity Calculator) CC – will be given on how these c-indicators can guide the circular design of products at different steps of the design process. Promising perspectives for future research will also be discussed and illustrated, such as the integration, compatibility, and combination of c-indicators with other design methods and tools, like life cycle assessment software or computer-aided design programs.

Presenting Author: Michael Saidani University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Authors:

Michael Saidani University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Harrison Kim University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Bernard Yannou Université Paris-Saclay, CentraleSupélec