Preparing For Tomorrow, Exploring design adaptations of a wheel loader for a circular business model

Abstract

One suggested way of dealing with the ever-increasing demand for services and products from a continuously growing population is through circular economy. The concept of circular economy means, among other things, optimizing products´ use and useful life and making fewer products accessible for more users. The purpose of this thesis project is to explore the potential of a use and sustainability centred product development process. The process is aiming to explore how a product system can be redesigned to become more resource efficient. To explore the potential of the process, it is applied on a case study. The targeted product is the Volvo wheel loader, L150H, presumptively involved in a functional sales business model, inspired by circular economy. Since there seems to be no consensus about what the process should look like, the project first defines a suitable framework, based on the use(r) centred development process. The inclusion of ecodesign and a product life cycle perspective is used to emphasize the sustainability aspects. Inspired by backcasting, a future sustainable scenario is developed and key areas for reaching the scenario are identified. Consumables, and more specifically, the main fuel filter is selected for the redesign phase. Requirements for a new solution are identified and solution paths are presented for reducing the environmental impact. An iterative design phase results in a remanufacturing concept, and the corresponding re-design of the fuel filter. The new filter concept is designed to last the entire life of the machine through a robust design and by being remanufactured, instead of disposed, after each service. A conducted LCA shows that by using one filter over the expected machine life, instead of an estimated 40 filters, major material savings can be achieved. In addition, the assessment show that the concept also induces a reduction in global warming potential by almost 90 % over the life cycle. The project result indicates that the use and sustainability centred product development process not only has the potential to generate a material resource efficient solution, but also, a solution which is sufficiently responding to the users’ needs. Despite the promising result in this case, the process still requires further development, and to be tested on more cases before its potential can be verified in general terms.