A Design for De-manufacturing Methodology to Improve the Product End of Life Environmental Sustainability

De-manufacturing and re-manufacturing are well-known solutions for recovering value from products that have reached their End of Life (EoL) and thus reducing resource exploitation. Although such scenarios are implemented after the use phase, they must be considered since the very early stage of design. The paper proposes a methodology that can be applied at the design stage to detect space for product design improvements, also representing a baseline for organizations approaching de-manufacturing for the first time. The methodology consists of four main steps, in which firstly target components are identified according to their environmental impact; then the disassembly sequence is qualitatively evaluated, and successively quantitatively too. This leads to the identification and evaluation of different EoL scenarios. The application of the methodology to a professional espresso coffee machine highlighted a reduction of impacts up to 52% if re-using and re-manufacturing strategies are implemented.