Proposal of an integrated design framework for digital-enabled life cycle ecosystem

In order to achieve a circular economy (CE), a hopeful approach is to design an ecosystem consisting of multiple companies that interact with each other. Employing a platform that mediates the exchange of goods and data across product life cycles is useful for achieving interactions within an ecosystem. In this study, we propose the concept of a digital ecosystem of multiple product life cycles (DELE) that is supported by digital technology as one approach to designing such an ecosystem. In addition, we propose a framework to support the design of DELE concepts. The framework structures DELE concepts as consisting of 11 elements, including platforms. The framework clarifies the structure of the ecosystem and supports designing the ecosystem concept. To confirm the effectiveness of the framework, the authors redesigned the ecosystem they had previously created. As a result of the redesign, they were able to come up with additional concepts for improving the economic and environmental aspects of the product life cycles within the ecosystem. Through the case study, we confirmed that the proposed framework supports designers in creating the concept for creating economic and environmental value across the product life cycles. The limitations and future issues of this research include the point that the framework proposed in this study does not take network effects into account. Therefore, future research includes proposing a support method for designing DELE concepts that explicitly take network effects into account and mitigating the increase in complexity in the design of individual product life cycles.