Aiding Future Remanufacturing : User-Centered Design of a Digital Product Passport Platform for Remanufacturing of Electric Motors

Sammanfattning

The transition towards a circular economy puts increasing demands on traceability and transparent data accessibility across product lifecycles. Within the European Union, the Digital Product Passport (DPP) has been proposed as a regulatory instrument to allow for sharing of product-related information in support of sustainability. While technical and regulatory aspects of the DPP are currently being developed, less attention has been given to how systems should be designed to support everyday work practices within industrial contexts. The objective of this thesis is to explore how a DPP platform can be designed to support remanufacturing workflows with a user-cantered approach, aiming to bridge theoretical perspectives on usability and change management through practical design exploration. The thesis is conducted within the European Union’s Horizon 2020 project RemaNet and focuses on remanufacturing of industrial components, using electric motors as an illustrative use case. Three alternative design concepts were developed to address different stakeholder perspectives: operational efficiency for remanufacturing operators, (environmental) impact visualization for managerial stakeholders, and transparency (communication) for end users. The concept focused on shop-floor efficiency for DPP logging was developed further into an interactive, mobile-first proof-of-concept prototype. Usability evaluation of the prototype was conducted through cognitive walkthrough-based user testing with six participants from repair and engineering backgrounds. The results indicate that clear workflow alignment, progressive disclosure, task-specific information presentation, and immediate system feedback are vital factors for perceived usefulness and adoption. The thesis does not propose a fully implemented technical system but contributes to design knowledge, concepts, user feedback, and UI guidelines for how DPP-enabled platforms could be structured to support remanufacturing operations. The intention of the thesis results is to inform future development within the RemaNet project and similar initiatives within the EU.