The Dutch government wants to be circular in 2050. The industry of kitchens and kitchen appliances needs new innovative models of practice to reduce its environmental footprint. As kitchen appliance manufacturer, ATAG Benelux is investing in innovation to create more sustainable and circular business propositions. In a circular economy products and materials have to ‘loop’ back into the system after they lost value, but ATAG’s current system is linear, bringing the appliances to the customer and not returning them. The aim of this thesis is to explore how ATAG can use design to contribute to a circular economy. It is a collaboration between ATAG Benelux and Delft University of Technology. This thesis focuses on the user, their behavior, and their attitudes towards Product Service Systems (PSS's) and Refurbishment as they play a big role in business models. As a case study, the combi-steam oven is used to explore PSS's. The user’s attitude towards refurbishment and circular PSS’s is explored through in-depth interviews. The results reveal several challenges in acceptance for different types of ownership of ovens and show that for the target group of ATAG a system of buy-back is most suitable. The context of retaining value for refurbishment was researched through literature, interviews, and creative sessions. This shows different directions for design to benefit the refurbishment process. The recommended circular business proposition is for ATAG to take back appliances after a use cycle. ATAG Benelux can refurbish its products to save materials and resources. For refurbishment it is important that products retain their value as long as possible. The final design consists of return incentives for users and the Care Assistant. This human centered design stimulates product care, which is a type of sustainable use and handling. The design will influence the user’s behavior in a sustainable way to retain more value, enable efficient refurbishment and a second life cycle. The product care is needed to have a longer product life, or to take back an appliance that is in a better state (than it would be if product care had not been stimulated). With a buy-back system, users are stimulated to return the appliances, rather than let the appliance end up in recycling or worse.

This paper presents the results of two co-creation sessions with stakeholders in the automotive aftermarket. The sessions were instigated as part of the EU project ReCiPSS to develop a new service to simplify the reverse logistics of automotive cores purposed for remanufacturing. Remanufacturing car parts is a longstanding practice within the automotive aftermarket. Over the last fifty years a mature, but also highly complex, market has developed. The reverse logistics of these cores substantially increases the complexity and costs of the remanufacturing process due to the fact that they are repeatedly shipped, handled, (re)identified and (re)assessed for quality and their remanufacturability by different actors within the supply chain. This is due to the fact that most cores are returned along the exact same route that the (remanufactured) replacement part took in the forward logistics, using a so called ‘surcharge’ or ‘deposit’ system. Core broker networks are used to fill in the gaps where not enough cores are coming in through the surcharge system. Together, this forms a complicated network. The current setup has benefits, e.g. with regards to customer relationships and higher return rates, but also provides the necessary challenges. To identify these benefits and challenges, as well as the needs of different stakeholders within the supply chain, a series of co-creation sessions were held with different actors. This paper presents the results of two sessions. This first was with a wholesaler, the second with several core brokers and a service provider. New insights were gained on the landscape of reverse logistics of automotive cores and the challenges different stakeholders are facing. These are presented in the paper in graphic overviews. Challenges include a lack of transparency and traceability leading to distrust, poor identification possibilities of cores, as well as threats from cheap infill and copies. With these results, new value propositions for the different stakeholders were developed. These were used to design and pilot an online platform together with a single service provider. The platform aims to benefit the different stakeholders while simultaneously reducing the complexity of the reverse logistics by identifying and evaluating cores only once before being directly shipped to their final destination. The paper concludes by highlighting the opportunities and challenges that the remanufacturing market is facing, based on the insights gathered from different stakeholders, and the implications for the future of the remanufacturing industry and policy.