The Cost of Ownership Tool

Abstract

This Thesis report covers the creation and validation of a spreadsheet-based self-declared quantitative cost of ownership tool. The accompanying labelling Scheme informs customers about the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of their products with a focus on the Repair Costs. The Total Cost of Ownership Tool (TCOT) offers customers a better comparative potential with regard to the longevity of products.

The tool distinguishes itself from currently existing initiatives and tools for it provides a quantitative scoring of the cost of ownership and repair. This quantitative scoring is detrimental to the fair comparison of products. Previously existing tools mainly provided a qualitative grading. For this concept to work product manufacturers will be obliged by legislative organs to fill in the TCOT to get a corresponding label that needs to be displayed at the place of purchase. The tool in return provides the manufacturers with valuable data on how to improve their products. The newly obtained quantitative data can be used by legislators to assess the progress of longevity of products to assess the effectiveness of the newly adopted TCOT legislations.

To explore this solution space the cost of ownership and repair needed to be expressed in a mathematical formula. Thereafter the factors that influence the variables in this formula needed to be quantitatively expressed. One major qualitative element however remained. The grading of the chance of a successful repair was performed by including conditions and criteria of the French Repairability Index (FRI).
The development of the tool relied on iterative cycles of performing case studies with data on smartphones. The early iteration cycles revealed that small variations in the input variables resulted in significant differences in the outputs. Not only was the available literature on some of these variables limited. Often sources provided contradicting figures making conclusive results difficult to obtain. To test the technical aspects of the tool and assess the individual impacts of the input variables, different scenarios were explored. This provided insights into how the tool deals with the varying input data. The outcome of these tests fell within the bounds of expectation and revealed what further steps need to be undertaken to further develop the TCOT.

The quantitative display of these often unknown and intangible ownership costs provides the customer with the information that she needs to better be able to choose a longer-lasting product. This newly acquired transparency towards the customer can help legislators nudge manufacturers into producing longer-lasting products. The further development of the tool and its accompanying label scheme will help with the transition towards the envisioned circular European Union by 2050