This project aims to develop an easy-to-use method to (re)design products for ease of disassembly and subsequently for circular strategies, such as repair, refurbish, remanufacture, etc. Improving repairability is one of the first steps in decreasing the environmental impact of products by prolonging their technical lifespan. This thesis focuses on two separate tools that have the potential to be integrated: the Hotspot Mapping tool and the Disassembly Map. Both tools assess a product by disassembling it into its core parts and recording the properties of the parts and the disassembly steps (Fazio & et al., 2021; Flipsen et al., 2020).
The Hotspot Mapping tool highlights parts and disassembly activities that are important due to their failure rate, functionality, disassembly effort, and environmental and economic impact. On the other hand, the Disassembly Map uses these highlighted features to create a visual representation of the product architecture. Since the inputs for both tools are similar, it raises the question of whether it is possible to link them together.
The tools are analysed by literature review and usability questionnaires, resulting in a usability score of the original tool and strengths and weaknesses in terms of features and usability. Through an iterative approach, a new tool is developed, that uses a node/edge lists data structure to describe the product architecture of a product. This data-structure allows for the automatic generation of a dynamic Disassembly Map (Figure 1) in the visualisation software program yEd Graph Editor. The dynamic Disassembly Map allows designers to select which properties to display and which to hide, enabling focused attention and a better overview.
Through user testing the new method has been proven to offer increased usability, requiring less time to fill in, and an overall preference by all usability test participants over the original Hotspot Mapping and Disassembly Map tools.