A practical ICT framework for transition to circular manufacturing systems

Abstract

The transition towards a circular economy has become important. Manufacturing industry being a major stakeholder in this transition has started exploring the potential of this transition and challenges in implementation. Ambitious companies such as Gorenje d.d. has taken the circular economy transition seriously and aims to become a pioneer in implementing circular manufacturing systems. One vital step in this transition is the business model shift from the linear (sales model) to a circular model such as ‘product as a service’. This brings new challenges to Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) that have never been experienced in their conventional businesses. One of the challenges is to establish an information communication and technology (ICT) infrastructure that enables information management and sharing as well as establishes a real-time communication between relevant stakeholders. Outlining such an ICT infrastructure is the objective of this paper.

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Procedia CIRP 00 (2017) 000–000
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2212-8271 © 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.
Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the 28th C IRP Design Conference 2018.
28th CIRP Design Conference, May 2018, Nantes, France
A new methodology to analyze the functional and physical architecture of
existing products for an assembly oriented product family identification
Paul Stief *, Jean-Yves Dantan, Alain Etienne, Ali Siadat
École Nationale Supérieure d’Arts et Métiers, Arts et Métiers ParisTech, LCFC EA 4495, 4 Rue Augustin Fresnel, Metz 57078, France
* Corresponding author. Tel.: +33 3 87 37 54 30; E-mail address: paul.stief@ensam.eu
Abstract
In today’s business environment, the trend towards more product variety and customization is unbroken. Due to this development, the need of
agile and reconfigurable production systems emerged to cope with various products and product families. To design and optimize production
systems as well as to choose the optimal product matches, product analysis methods are needed. Indeed, most of the known methods aim to
analyze a product or one product family on the physical level. Different product families, however, may differ largely in terms of the number and
nature of components. This fact impedes an efficient comparison and choice of appropriate product family combinations for the production
system. A new methodology is proposed to analyze existing products in view of their functional and physical architecture. The aim is to cluster
these products in new assembly oriented product families for the optimization of existing assembly lines and the creation of future reconfigurable
assembly systems. Based on Datum Flow Chain, the physical structure of the products is analyzed. Functional subassemblies are identified, and
a functional analysis is performed. Moreover, a hybrid functional and physical architecture graph (HyFPAG) is the output which depicts the
similarity between product families by providing design support to both, production system planners and product designers. An illustrative
example of a nail-clipper is used to explain the proposed methodology. An industrial case study on two product families of steering columns of
thyssenkrupp Presta France is then carried out to give a first industrial evaluation of the proposed approach.
© 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.
Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the 28th CIRP Design Conference 2018.
Keywords: Assembly; Design method; Family identification
1. Introduction
Due to the fast development in the domain of
communication and an ongoing trend of digitization and
digitalization, manufacturing enterprises are facing important
challenges in today’s market environments: a continuing
tendency towards reduction of product development times and
shortened product lifecycles. In addition, there is an increasing
demand of customization, being at the same time in a global
competition with competitors all over the world. This trend,
which is inducing the development from macro to micro
markets, results in diminished lot sizes due to augmenting
product varieties (high-volume to low-volume production) [1].
To cope with this augmenting variety as well as to be able to
identify possible optimization potentials in the existing
production system, it is important to have a precise knowledge
of the product range and characteristics manufactured and/or
assembled in this system. In this context, the main challenge in
modelling and analysis is now not only to cope with single
products, a limited product range or existing product families,
but also to be able to analyze and to compare products to define
new product families. It can be observed that classical existing
product families are regrouped in function of clients or features.
However, assembly oriented product families are hardly to find.
On the product family level, products differ mainly in two
main characteristics: (i) the number of components and (ii) the
type of components (e.g. mechanical, electrical, electronical).
Classical methodologies considering mainly single products
or solitary, already existing product families analyze the
product structure on a physical level (components level) which
causes difficulties regarding an efficient definition and
comparison of different product families. Addressing this
Procedia CIRP 72 (2018) 598–602
2212-8271 © 2018 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.
Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the 51st CIRP Conference on Manufacturing Systems.
10.1016/j.procir.2018.03.311
Available online at www.sciencedirect.com
ScienceDirect
Procedia CIRP 00 (2018) 000–000
www.elsevier.com/locate/procedia
2212-8271 © 2018 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.
Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the 51st CIRP Conference on Manufacturing Systems.
51st CIRP Conference on Manufacturing Systems
A practical ICT framework for transition to circular manufacturing systems
Farazee M. A. Asifa*, Malvina Rocia, Michael Liedera, Amir Rashida, Mitja Štimulakb, Erik
Halvordssonc, Ruud de Bruijckered
aKTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm SE-10044,Sweden
bGorenje d.d., Partizanska cesta 12, Velenje 3320,Slovenia
cSimonsoft UK Ltd., 21 East Street, Bromley, Kent-BR1 1QE,UK
dSignifikant Svenska AB, Industrivägen 17, Solna 171 48; Sweden
* Corresponding author. Tel.: +46 8 790 90 76; fax: +46 8 21 08 51.E-mail address:aasi@kth.se
Abstract
The transition towards a circular economy has become important.Manufacturing industry being a major stakeholder in this transition has
started exploring the potential of this transition and challenges in implementation. Ambitious companies such as Gorenje d.d. has taken the
circular economy transition seriously and aims to become a pioneer in implementing circular manufacturing systems. One vital step in this
transition is the business model shift from the linear (sales model) to acircular model such as ‘product as aservice’. This brings new challenges
to Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) that have never been experiencedin their conventional businesses. One of the challenges is to
establish an information communication and technology (ICT) infrastructure that enables information management and sharing as well as
establishes a real-time communication between relevant stakeholders. Outlining such an ICT infrastructure is the objective of this paper.
©2018The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.
Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the 51st CIRP Conference on Manufacturing Systems.
Keywords: Circular economy, Circular manufactuirng systems, Business models, ICT
1. Introduction
Economic and environmental benefits as well as
sustainability aspects of Circular Economy (CE) both at micro
and macro level are well-evident [1] [2] [3]. Therefore,
stimulating the transition towards a circular economy has
become a priority for both European Commission (EC) and
for Sweden as a leading industrial nation. While EC is pushing
this through an ambitious CE package [4],in Sweden the
momentum has already been reached in different industrial
sectors and the government has identified circular and bio-
based economy as one of the strategic areas to strengthen [5].
Sustainability being the core business value for Gorenje
d.d. since long has also committed to the CE approach to bring
the sustainability to a new level by implementing Circular
Manufacturing Systems (CMS)1.CMS in this context refers to
recovery of value (i.e. material, embedded energy and value
that are added to products during manufacturing processes)
through reusing, remanufacturing and recycling in a
systematic way.
Traditionally,Gorenje sells white goods and kitchen
appliances together with service and spare parts, like any other
manufacturers. As a step towards CMS,Gorenje aims to move
from their traditional product sales model to service-based
business models(SBBM) that will allow users to subscribe for
clean laundry servicesbased on apay-per-use scheme. In this
1Circular manufacturing system is a system that is designed intentionally for
closing the loop of products/components preferably in their original form,
through multiple lifecycles. This is a value management approach which
includes the phases value creation, delivery, use, recovery and reuse in a
systemic perspective. [7] [15]

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2Author name / Procedia CIRP 00 (2018) 000–000
business model Gorenje will retain the ownership of the
machines and the responsibility of service and maintenance
will also remain with Gorenje. This sort of business model is
considered highly relevant for implementing CMS which in
short-term meets customers’ satisfaction and in long-term
ensures certainty for manufacturers in value management
through better control over their products throughout the
product lifecycles. This business model will enable Gorenje to
recover (through reusing, remanufacturing and recycling)
value from used products in an efficient way which is a key
element of the CE approach.
However, implementing the CMS approach in
manufacturing industry that includes value creation, delivery,
use, recovery and reuse will require radical changes in
business models, product design, supply chains and
information management infrastructures [6] [7] [8].
Furthermore, these areas are mutually dependent on each other
and due to these dependencies, achange in the business model
requires that product design, supply chains and information
management infrastructures are also changed accordingly to
fit the new business model. This work mainly focuses on ICT
infrastructure and partly covers the product design aspects that
are necessary to consider in order to fit the business model
shift.
Having stated the above, the main objective of this paper is
to outline a practical framework for ICT infrastructure which
is essential for business model shift and implementation of
CMS. More specifically, this work defineswhat features an
ICT infrastructure should have and how it should function.
This research is part of a project funded by the European
Commission (EC) which aimsto bring forward a commercial
IT-platform that can become a leading ICT solution for the
implementation of CMS.This IT-platform is integrated with
the hardware and software through an Internet of Things (IoT)
platform for information communication and sharing.
Furthermore, the aim is to implementing machine learning in
order to predict the operation conditions of washing machines,
which is the case study product of this research project.
2. The state-of-the-art
The state-of-the-art has two dimensions in the context of
this work. The industrial state-of-the-art covers applicationsof
service-based business models, i.e. pay-per-use or similar
scheme by other actors in the market. Furthermore, Wi-
Fi/sensors enabled washing machinesthat are developed with
the purpose of implementing SBBM and/or CMS to some
extent are also considered as part of the industrial state-of-the-
art. The research state-of-the-art covers the area of ICT
infrastructures that are developed keeping CMS
implementation in mind.
The most relevant industrial example of SBBM in white
goods sector is a Dutch company called Bundles as reported
by Ellen MacArthur Foundation [9]. The users of Bundles can
choose from twostandard models of Miele washing machines
and subscribe for apay-per-use or pay-per-month scheme.
However, the ICT infrastructure that is used by Bundles is
limited to what Miele’s standard washing machines contain
with Bundles’ add-on application used for usage data
monitoring and billing purposes [10]. A similar service is
provided by another Dutch company called HOMIE that aims
to cover all home appliances but currently offers Zanussi
washing machines as pay-per-use. They also use standard
Zanussi machines added with their own application mainly for
billing purposes and usage data collection.[11] The third
example is also aDutch company;an online renting service
offered through www.wasgoed.com. The company rents a
wide range of white goods on monthlypayment scheme
without any added application for billing and/or usage data
collection [12]. There are several more actors in Europe that
provide similar renting services.
There are no IT-solutions available in the market that
specifically support implementation of CMS or SBBM. As
part of an ECfunded project called ResCoM2, a prototype of
Product Lifecycle Management tool has been developed for
managing and tracing product-related data throughout the
product lifecycles in the context of CMS. As part of a Vinnova
(Sweden) funded project,a prototype of an IT-platform has
been developed with the aim to enable implementation of
SBBM. Zihan et al (2014 [13]) and Michael et al (2016 [14])
have described the ground work together with the
development and testing of the IT-platform. This IT-platform
is now being further developed to make it a complete ICT
infrastructure which is crucial for the business model shift and
implementation of CMS.
Although the project deals with a specific issue, i.e. ICT
infrastructure of a specific industry, i.e. the white good sector,
this approach can be implemented in various areas where
cross-organization collaboration and real-time communication
with multiple stakeholders is crucial.
3. The ICT infrastructureand its emergence
Our research has revealed that to succeed with the business
model sift in the context of CE and CMS, it is not enough to
have an ICT infrastructure consisting of machines that only
collect and send usage data for billing purposes [6] [7]. A
more sophisticated ICT infrastructure is required that can
sense, collect, and process useful information and share that to
all relevant stakeholders as shown in Fig 1.
2www.rescoms.eu

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Author name / Procedia CIRP 00 (2018) 000–000 3
Fig 1. An overview of the ICT infrastructure.
Such an ICT infrastructure consists of machinesthat can
sensedifferent operational data using sensors and send the
data to an internet server. The internet server which also stores
a set of digital twins of the washing machinesprocesses the
data to detect anomalies. The information and data is then
made accessible to different users through aweb application.
Further details of each part of the ICT infrastructure are
described in the following sections.
3.1. Wi-Fi enabled washing machine
Connected white goodsare fundamental building blocks of
smart homes and the future of the whole white goods industry.
This is considered as the next big paradigm shift due to the
developments in the IoT industry, especially the price drop of
Wi-Fi module and cloud-based solutions are making this
potential more realizable. Just by extrapolating the fact that
more and more devices will be connected to the internet, it is
reasonable to imagine that washing machine-users will like to
have a connected machine with the feature to remotely turn
on/off, start a program, get statistics about power and water
consumption, etc.
Although these features are interesting and desired, they
cannot alone justify implementation of the IoT in white goods.
Firstly, because in future these features are going to be
essential and expected and secondly, only limited number of
people will be willing to pay extra for such features.
Therefore, to exploit the features of connected washing
machines,Gorenje must develop new use cases beyond these
essential features. The potential lies in improving after sales
services through predictive maintenance and by providing
customized services, collecting usage data to optimize
operations and utilization of machines with software updates.
All these are vital elements of business model shift and crucial
for implementation of CMS and therefore, Gorenje’s research
and development activities are moving towards this direction.
Unlike usual research projects and feasibility studies,
Gorenje has started with an off the shelf hardware to minimize
risksand costs of development.In this case,a well-recognized
and popular IoT platform called Raspberry Pi (Rpi) is being
used. Raspberry Pi is a credit card size microcomputer, with
1.2 GHz ARM microprocessor and integrated wireless card.
Most importantly, it has 17 general-purpose input/output
(GPIO) analog/digital channels and strong user-based support.
The electronic parts of the washing machine are connected to
Rpi through a motherboard developed especially for this
purpose. Rpi typically comes with a Linux operating system,
which automatically takes care of Wi-Fi connection and
makes it easier to add as well as manage multiple sensors. The
Rpi platform is useful for an easy and fast deployment of
connectivity feature which also resembles to electronic
devices that are ready for production. In general, Rpi provides
an easy and cheap way for testing new ideas. This has cut
down the development cost and enabledGorenje to focus on
the implementation of the SBBM rather than only focus on
technical development.
3.2. Integration with method and model for predictive
maintenance
As mentioned earlier, just the Wi-Fi enabled washing
machines that collect basic operational data will not win users
and create a business case for OEMs in long-run.It is essential
that such features provide competitive advantages to Gorenje
or create a solid ground for business model shift. With this in
mind,an integration platform (as shown in figure Fig 2) is
being developed which will serve as a back-end for data
collection (from the washing machines) and present the
information to multiple users by using the IT-platform.
Furthermore, a methodology and operational model for
maintenance and prediction of remaining lifespan (by
predicting the health of different components) of the washing
machine’s sub-systems is being explored. The key features of
this methodology are to,
•use accelerated test at existing product test facilities as
data source,
•use this data to train a machine learning (ML) model
and
•operationalize the model using a server solution.
Fig 2. An overview of integration and predictive maintenance mechanism
The objective in this case is to prove that the data collected
during the accelerated life testing can be used to create data
models that are useful when predicting the lifespan of
componentsor sub-systems of complex productslike washing
machines. This approach is highly relevant since machine
learning implemented to failure/lifespan predictions are based

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4Author name / Procedia CIRP 00 (2018) 000–000
on the collection of sample data from real failures occurring
during operation of machines.In this research,sample data on
failures that occur in the heater, bearings as well as water inlet
and outlet pipes are being prioritized and being collected from
the Gorenje’s test facilities.
The data that are collected from the washing machines and
processed to predict failures need to be presented to users of
the information, i.e. OEM, service organization,end users etc.
in a useful form. This purpose will be fulfilled by the IT-
platform described below.
3.3. The IT-platform
The IT-Platform is a solution that allows manufacturers to
manage and publish technical information from multiple
sources to one website. Through the developments in this
project,following applicationshave been added to the IT-
platform:
•Asset management: to be able to handle individual
machines.
•Machine cards: to keep track of the machines’ real
composition.
•Integration to IoT platforms (ThingWorx in this
case): to get real-time operational data and predictive
maintenance notifications.
•Integration to ticketing systems (Jira in this case): to
handle the process for planning and processing the
predictive maintenance.
•Uploading of maintenance protocols:to document
the predictive maintenance activities.
The objective is to provide each relevant user-category an
appropriate home page for the individual machine. For
instance,an end user will have an interface (as shown in Fig
3) with basic information such as number of washes, when
next service/ maintenance is due, cycles per day, quantity of
detergent used and weight of the laundries etc.
Fig 3. An example of the interface designed for single machine and end user
Similarly, the service organization will have the interface
layer where information about several machineswill be
displayed as shown in figure Fig 4.
Fig 4.An example of the interface designed for multiple machines and service
organization.
To summarize, the web application includes information
from several sources in order to guide different stakeholders in
what actions to be takenand when.Furthermore, it will help
the users to perform their tasks effectively through making the
correct documentation available and make it easier to order
the correct spare parts on right time and quantity.Presenting
real-time operational information will also inspire the end
users to use their machinescost effectively or in an
environmental friendly manner.
4. Conclusions
This paper presents a practical ICT framework that is
necessary to shift from traditional product sales models to
service based business models.The need for such a framework
has emerged from the fact that to achieve the goals of CE,
manufacturing industryneedsto adopt aCMS approach. In
this transition, embracing the SBBM has become inevitable
and,for a smoother shift from the conventional sales model to
performance focused SBBM,sophisticated ICT infrastructures
are needed. The state-of-the-art review shows that although
existing solutions are creating abusiness case for some small
companies, for abetter management of the value starting from
the creation to the recovery and reuse,existing solutions need
to go beyond their current functionality. Furthermore, the
existing solutions only cover the basic features which will
become outdated with the fast development in the field of IoT.
The framework presented in this paper will not only create a
business case for OEMs today but will tackle many challenges
of implementing circular manufacturing systems in the long
run.
Nevertheless, all innovations bring challenges that need to
be dealt with. In our view, the IoT development that is
necessary for the business model shift has become matured
enough and therefore, technical challenges are less likely to
become an issue. Consumers’ acceptance of fully connected
machine with the risk of invasion of personal information is a
great challenge. Furthermore, there are legislative fireworks

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Author name / Procedia CIRP 00 (2018) 000–000 5
that may make both implementation of IoT and CMS
approach challenging.
Acknowledgements
The work presented in this paper is an outcome of the
SerBIT (E!10521) project which has received funding from
the Eurostars-2 Program, co-funded by EUREKA member
countries and the European Union Horizon 2020 Framework
Program.
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