Product Eco-Design in the Era of Circular

Economy: Experiences in the Design of Espresso

Coffee Machines

Claudio Favi1 , Marco Marconi2(B) , Marta Rossi3 , and Federica Cappelletti3

1 Department of Engineering and Architecture, Università degli Studi di Parma, Parco Area
delle Scienze 181/A, 43124 Parma, Italy
2 Università degli Studi della Tuscia, Largo dell’Università, 01100 Viterbo, Italy
[email protected]
3 Department of Industrial Engineering and Mathematical Sciences, Università Politecnica delle

Marche, Via Brecce Bianche, 60131 Ancona, Italy

Abstract. Product eco-design includes several methodologies aimed at support-

ing companies in the development of sustainable products. Currently, this theme
is assuming an important role in both the academia and industry worlds due to
the increasing attention to environmental problems and the need for a transi-
tion toward circular economy business/organizational models. In this context, the
present paper focuses on the industrial sector of espresso coffee machines manu-
facturing which has several unexploited potentialities. The analysis of the sector
specificity (internal and external contexts), as well as of the product lifecycle
allowed to define an eco-design framework to guide companies involved in the
design and production of espresso coffee machines. Effective eco-design strate-
gies should include the combined use of specific methods, tools and metrics to
manage all the most important lifecycle phases (beginning of life, middle of life,
end of life) during the design activities in order to set preventive actions that avoid
future potential environmental impacts. Only in this way, the environmental and
economic benefits of the circular economy paradigm (e.g. remanufacturing/reuse
of selected components) can be practically exploited in real industrial contexts.
The presented case studies confirmed that the application of design for disas-
sembly rules positively contributes to increase the product performances during
maintenance and end of life, while a re-design oriented to component modularity
could be a key strategy to pursue remanufacturing for boilers, a key and expensive
component included in espresso coffee machines.

Keywords: Product eco-design · Circular economy · Remanufacturing ·

Recycling · Coffee machine

1 Introduction

Eco-design includes a set of design methodologies that support technical departments

in the development of sustainable products. Several key factors are forcing companies

© The Author(s) 2021

L. Roucoules et al. (Eds.): JCM 2020, LNME, pp. 194–199, 2021.
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70566-4_31
 Product Eco-design in the Era of Circular Economy 195

to launch in the market products with a minimized environmental load: new legisla-
tions, the opportunity to enlarge the market share, economic advantages, brand preser-
vation, increasing environmental awareness of customers [1]. This context stimulated
the development of hundreds of general-purpose or sectorial eco-design methods and
tools from both the scientific and industrial world [2]. In recent years, the concept of
circular economy (CE) acquired importance as a business/organizational model focused
on the increasing of product lifetime, minimization of scraps/wastes, implementation of
closed-loop end of life (EoL) scenarios [3]. Currently, the implementation of CE models
is mainly based on “remedial” actions that foresee the recovery of products and materials
discarded at the end of their useful life. Too many decisions are still made without a
strategy, resulting in higher costs and lower success rate, while eco-design must be a
proactive management approach [4]. However, such approaches have a limited efficiency
and only a transition to “preventive” actions can lead to full benefits of the CE paradigm
[5]. This is the main reason why in the last years the scientific community is increasingly
focused on the proposal of design methodologies aimed at supporting the development
of products that are easy to manage and recover at EoL. One of the most widespread is
design for disassembly (DfD), a target design methodology focused on the product disas-
sembly, a preliminary but essential phase for both maintenance/repair of products during
the use phase, and at the EoL, in order to favor the component reuse/remanufacturing
and the material separation/recycling [6]. Even if disassembly occurs during the lifetime
or at the EoL, the choices made at the design phases strongly influence the disassembly
performance. For this reason, several literature studies are focused on identifying the
optimized disassembly sequence for components with high residual value [7], defining
calculation methods and new disassemblability metrics (e.g. time, cost), evaluating EoL
performance, developing tools for supporting design activities [8].
The present paper aims to investigate how existing eco-design methods, tools and
metrics can be used in the context of espresso coffee machines. The characterization of
such industrial sector and products provided several eco-design actions that can be re-
injected in other field and in the development of other products. The novelty consists in
defining a framework to guide companies belonging to this sector in the transition toward
eco-sustainability and the exploitation of CE opportunities, through the implementation
of eco-design methods and tools.
After the Introduction that clarifies the general context, Sect. 2 explains how eco-
design can be applied in case of coffee machine production, detailing the most useful and
suitable methods, tools and metrics. Section 3 presents some experiences of eco-design
implementation carried out in collaboration with an Italian company. Finally, Sect. 4
discusses outcomes, limitations and future work.

2 Product Eco-Design for Coffee Machines

Starting from the analysis of eco-design methods and tools, a customization for profes-
sional coffee–machine sector is proposed; a selection of tools is identified, and benefits
related to their implementation are discussed considering the life cycle phases and the
issues faced.
A professional espresso coffee machine is a complex product whose main function-
ality is to support the barman in the preparation of coffee-based drinks. Analyzing the
196 C. Favi et al.

product and the different lifecycle phases, it is clear that to effectively pursue eco-design,
several internal and external factors need be taken into account. Specific legislations (e.g.
EU directives on eco-design or waste of electric equipment), customer requirements (e.g.
high-end vs low-end markets, customer awareness on environmental themes), company
business objectives, the complexity of certain key components/functional groups (e.g.
boiler, brewing groups), the high consumption of energy during the long lifetime (up to
10–15 years), the difficulty to manage the product at EoL and exploit CE potentialities,
are some of the aspects to be considered, forcing to take into account the whole product
lifecycle. Different eco-design strategies and metrics need to be simultaneously used to
have sensible benefits and avoid burden shifting, as depicted in Fig. 1.
Beginning of Life (BoL) includes all the phases needed for the coffee machine man-
ufacturing until its distribution and use. Due to the complexity of such products a high
number of heterogeneous materials are commonly used (e.g. steel for frame, copper
for boilers, aluminum for other internal parts), brass or aluminum for brewing groups,
different typologies of plastics for internal parts and the external case, stainless steel
in case of high-end market products). Moreover, it must be considered that material
choice strongly influences the performances of the successive phases (e.g. recyclabil-
ity or possibility to separate material at EoL). Therefore, eco-design in the context of
coffee machine BoL requires the use of material selection tools or at least a material
database including environmental properties of materials (e.g. Ansys Granta Selector
tool equipped with the Ansys Granta MI database). The use of such tools allows antic-
ipating sustainable matters yet in the first design phase and reduce the environmental
impact of products.
Middle of Life (MoL) is a key phase, since it is well known that most of the environ-
mental impacts for energy using products is caused during their use (up to 95–98% in
case of coffee machines). The energy consumption is the most important metric concern-
ing the use phase. Its accurate forecast and/or measurement through standard protocols
and use scenarios (not existing at the moment in the field of coffee machines) are essen-
tial aspects to implement effective eco-design actions (e.g. thermal insulation of boilers
and pipes for heat dissipation reduction). Concerning Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)
indicators to be considered for the use phase analysis, the Global Warming Potential
(GWP measured in [kgCO2eq]) is certainly the most suitable and useful indicator for
coffee machines, as also confirmed by recent literature studies [9].
End of Life includes all the phases successive to the product discard at the end of the
useful life. The monitoring of the product/component disassemblability during the design
phase is a key activity to guarantee the implementation of closed-loop EoL strategies.
DfD metrics, as disassembly time and cost, must be quantified for target components, on
the basis of available design data (e.g. 3D models, product structure, bill of materials),
by using dedicated methods and tools [8]. In addition, EoL indices should be exploited
during the coffee machine design to preliminarily verify the feasibility and convenience
of a certain EoL scenario (e.g. remanufacturing), and focus the design for EoL strategy
toward the right direction [10].
 Product Eco-design in the Era of Circular Economy 197

Fig. 1. Correlations among lifecycle phases, eco-design issues/potentialities and most suitable
supporting methods/tools/metrics.

3 Case Studies

In this section, few examples of good practices oriented to eco-design are presented.
Most of them refers to the product EoL that is one of the most critical phases to consider
in this century when virgin resources are becoming scarce, and the management of
domestic and industrial wastes is a key issue for environment.
The first example proposed within this study is the reduction of disassembly time for
target components (Fig. 2). Reduction of disassembly time is directly correlated to the
reduction of disassembly operations (i.e. decrease the number of components to disas-
semble) and the reduction of time for each operation (i.e. faster assembly/disassembly
connectors). In Fig. 2 the target component is the “plastic bowl” used to contain water.
Bowl requires to be disassembled during the product use for water refilling and because
this component is subjected to damage. The redesign action included the integration of
different component in a single one (made by only one type of plastic) and the possibility
to easy disassemble it with the adoption of cylindrical plastic snap-fits, instead of the
original threaded joints.
Connected with the disassembly phase, EoL business models oriented to CE (i.e.
component remanufacturing, product refurbishment) are new important paradigms to
pursue for companies that want to increase their business volumes. To this aim, key
components with high material and manufacturing costs require a specific design. This
is the case of the “main boiler” which requires to be manufactured with copper-based
materials (i.e. copper or brass) due to their thermal performances. The design of main
boiler changed to adapt different connectors for other espresso machine models (Fig. 3).
Indeed, this component can be remanufactured with the aim to be reused in a large number
198 C. Favi et al.

Fig. 2. Examples of design modifications to decrease disassembly time of plastic parts.

of models. The most important design change was related to the flange/cap that was
adapted to several configurations and attachments with other components. Environmental
analysis should be always coupled with cost analysis. Even remanufacturing option
requires additional costs, they are lower than the economic profits provided by the
implementation of this new business model.

A B
Fig. 3. Examples of design modifications for the main boiler (remanufacturing purpose): Original
design (A) vs New design (B).

4 Conclusions

This paper investigates eco-design methods in the specific context of espresso coffee
machine product development. The specificity of this product deals with the adoption
of dedicated eco-design actions and metrics to implement CE business models. Few
examples were discussed providing some models that can be exploited also in other
contexts: (i) disassembly, (ii) recycling, and (iii) remanufacturing. While disassembly
is a key performance indicator in the analysis of EoL options for target components,
recycling and remanufacturing are new business models that can be implemented after a
technical, economic and environmental analyses. Within the case study the re-design of
target components allowed to implement emerging business models (i.e. product reman-
ufacturing) encouraging the circular economy paradigm. Future work will be focused
on the definition of key performance indicators (EoL indices) dedicated to the espresso
coffee machine sector, able to consider the three pillars of sustainability: (i) economic,
(ii) environmental, and (iii) social. These indicators can be used as decision-making tool
in the assessment of design alternatives as well as in the definition of eco-design actions.
 Product Eco-design in the Era of Circular Economy 199

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