Extending lifespan: Wear and non-wear component analysis in end-of-life products

Products often end up in landfills after serving their purpose, e.g. after their end-of-life. While some parts can be/sometimes are salvaged for valuable materials like rare earth elements, the majority are discarded-a common but wasteful practice. The concept of circular economy promotes recycling or recovering to maximize resource efficiency and to avoid landfill from end-of-life products, though often sub-optimally. Our method introduces a simple, yet novel, concept grounded in circular economy principles to extend the lifespan of end-of-life products' components. The product is disassembled, and components are grouped based on their susceptibility to wear and tear. Using a 360° visual diagnostic tool, individual components are then categorized as either healthy with reduced remaining-useful-life or having reached end-of-life. Appropriate R-strategies such as reuse, repurpose, refurbish, remanufacture, recycle, and recover are subsequently applied, extending the lifespan of the component. The proof-of-concept for the 360° visual diagnostic tool is validated using a product from a Swedish outdoor power product manufacturer.•Focus on end-of-life products not originally designed with circular economy principles.•Expands R-strategies from recycle and recover to reuse, repurpose, refurbish, remanufacture, recycle and recover for end-of-life products.•Provides practitioners with a decision-making tool to estimate component-level circularity and identify end-of-life strategies.