Proposing an integrated indicator to measure product repairability

Abstract

Repairing is one of the most relevant strategies within the Circular Economy (CE) concept since it contributes to waste prevention and extends product and components' lifespan. Thus, reparability becomes an essential issue from the early product design phases, where materials, geometries, and joints are defined. Despite some repairability indicators that can be found in the literature and are applied worldwide, there is a lack of connection between repairability and the early decision-making process for improving it from the design of components of subsystems of a product. To contribute in that research direction, this article presents the Product Repairability Index (PRI), which considers the intrinsic repairability of the product components, their assembly/disassembly complexity, repairing instructions, availability of spare parts, and the self-diagnosis aids provided by the product. The PRI also considers components' relative functional importance to identify those with higher repairability requirements concerning their functional importance in the whole product assembly. The proposed indicator has been applied to a coffee machine as a case study, following a step-to-step methodology and calculation criteria to generate a quantitative value and detect the possible aspects to redesign to make a product more repairable.