Maintworld Magazine 4/2023

CIRCULAR ECONOMY
products. The longer the lifespan of
the asset providing value, the higher
life cycle profit might be achieved.
From a production perspective, it is
well known that efficient asset management
in the form of preventive
maintenance strategies has significant
impact on the production processes
in terms of higher availability,
dependability, and quality output.
For the strategy reuse, maintenance
plays an indirect role. The
main idea is to resell the product
on the second-hand market. For
products in bad shape, maintenance
in the form of cleaning, repair, or
The longer the
lifespan of the asset
providing value, the
higherlife cycle profit
might be achieved.
the similar is necessary. This could
be conducted by the second-hand
dealer or by a specialised contractor
offering maintenance services. If
maintenance is not done before the
sales, the new owner might need to
buy maintenance services instead.
Maintenance is a direct activity
in repair and refurbish. For fulfilling
these circular strategies, maintenance
services are offered to the
owner of the product. Maintenance
is, from this perspective, a business
model rather than an operations
strategy. In this context, refurbishing
is the same thing as doing
maintenance in the end-of-life of
the product. We can assume that the
product has a partial or complete
functional failure, and that corrective
and preventive maintenance is
needed. The maintenance need is,
thus, higher for this product than for
a product in need of repair.
Lastly, we have the remanufacturing
and repurposing strategies.
Cleaning and repair, i.e., common
maintenance activities, are necessary
sub-activities in the remanufacturing
or repurposing process. Remanufacturing
is defined as ”returning
a used product to at least its original
performance with a warranty
that is equivalent or better than that
of the newly manufactured product”
6 . If we scrutinize the definition
of remanufacturing, it is obvious
that maintenance plays a larger role,
as remanufacturing aims at regaining
the function of a product to at
least its original performance. Based
on this reasoning, remanufacturing
could be viewed as a maintenance
activity on the industrial scale.
In conclusion, we see that maintenance
is a crucial factor for achieving
circular strategies both within the
company and throughout the full life
span of the product. Maintenance
allows for reduction of virgin raw
material by making the products and
production more efficient. It prolongs
the lifespan of products and
components by appropriate services
for individual users and businesses,
and by centralized and industrialized
maintenance of products at the
end-of-life.
REFERENCES
[1] Kirchherr, J., Reike, D., & Hekkert, M. (2017). Conceptualizing the circular economy: An analysis of 114 definitions. Resources, conservation and
recycling, 127, 221-232.
[2] https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/report/2023/
[3] https://dashboards.sdgindex.org/rankings
[4] https://www.circularity-gap.world/
[5] http://www.pbl.nl/sites/default/files/cms/publicaties/pbl-2016-circular-economy-measuring-innovation-in-product-chains-2544.pdf
[6] British Standard Institute, 2009. BS 8887-2:2009 Design for manufacture, assembly, disassembly, and end-of-life processing (MADE) Terms and definitions.
4/2023 maintworld 43