Value Retention with the Digital Product Passport: Optimising Repair and Refurbishment Activities in the Furniture Industry

Abstract

The urgent need to act against climate change is emphasised in many initiatives, such as the Sustainable Development Goals, the European Green Deal and the Circular Economy Action Plan. The circular economy (CE) is an initiative aiming to keep products, components, and materials in the production and consumption loop for as long as possible with maximum value. It is popular in the scientific community; however, the global circularity rate is decreasing. This may be due to companies' reluctance to share supply chain data and their lack of comprehensive insight into complex circularity data ecosystems. Consequently, it is not immediately clear to them how they can contribute to an economy that is more circular. With growing environmental concerns, the selection of products and services is increasingly influenced by their environmental impact. The digital product passport (DPP) is an initiative of the European Commission facilitating environmental-conscious decision-making. However, having data from the DPP does not ensure optimal decisions regarding the minimal environmental impact or the highest value. It is because of the trade-offs between conflicting objectives. Therefore decision-support frameworks are needed to support decision-making in the CE. This paper presents an initial step towards creating a decision-support framework that quantifies trade-offs among R-strategies. It explores how the concept of perceived value can be expanded to include environmental aspects and examines how the DPP can facilitate circularity while addressing various conflicting objectives. In an exemplary use case, the optimal value retention strategy in case of repair and refurbishment is determined by multi-objective linear programming.