The Lifecycle Workbench -- A Configurable Framework for Digitized Product Maintenance Services

Abstract

The global production of electric goods is at an all-time high, causing negative environmental and health impacts as well as a continuing depletion of natural resources. Considering the worsening global climate change, a transition of current industrial processes is necessary to tackle the above-mentioned factors. To address this urgent issue, socio-economic systems like the Circular Economy (CE) provide options to reallocate the use of resources and products on a global scale. Especially in terms of product lifecycle-prolonging, this system provides suitable approaches to alter the current modes of product handling by society and industry alike, based on the condition of the products. Although the importance and benefits of sustainable services enabling these options are widely known, users tend to shy away from using them. One of the reasons is the missing reliability in terms of the knowledge of the costs associated with a particular service. This uncertainty in expected pricing can, therefore, lower the willingness of potential clients. However, not only clients struggle with the boundary conditions of such services. On the part of the potential providers of services, the monetary risk is often caused by the incapability to detect the condition of a product in advance. This can result on the provider side in a severe economic loss if this possibility is not covered by the service price or through the mass of items, which could allow equalization of serval service operations. To address these weak points in current service execution, the authors propose the \textit{Lifecycle Workbench (LCW)}-ecosystem, which features digital representations to enhance the reliability of service pricing as well as the assessment of the condition of items, assemblies, and parts in the Circular Economy domain.