Design for Circularity in Commercial Vehicles: A Framework for Bridging Circular Economy Concepts and Design for X

The increased interest in the Circular Economy (CE) bears great potential for the commercial vehicle (CV) industry. However, the complex discipline of CE consists of various concepts, terms, and different approaches that hamper its application beyond individual, isolated projects. Also, existing CE tools are only applicable to a limited extent in a CV-specific environment. Therefore, this paper presents the development of a framework that combines the concepts of circular business models (CBMs), CE strategies, and Design for X (DfX) approaches in a CV industry context. Furthermore, the framework enables CV component experts to identify adequate CE Strategies and derive meaningful DfX recommendations by providing the user with a brief CE introduction, guiding the user through binary decision trees, and hinting at starting points of implementation. For evaluation, ten expert interviews with CV component experts of a German CV OEM were conducted. The gained industry insights emphasize that there is no universal CE solution for diverse CV components. However, certain DfX approaches obtain particularly promising results. Overall, the developed framework is perceived as an intuitive, quick, and insightful tool and is the first guide to provide adequate CE recommendations, useful for the CV industry and similar sectors.