Author Archives: uldamienobrien
State-of-the-art in product-service systems
Introduction – what is PSS
A PSS (product-service system) is an integrated product and service offering that delivers value in use. A PSS offers the opportunity to decouple economic success from material consumption and hence reduce the environmental impact of economic activity. This paper focuses on taking many papers and taking findings from them to give the reader a good summary of the content and understanding of PSS.
What are the three most important findings that you can take from this paper?
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The model behind PSS is that rather than the customer buying the product and themselves having to manage all the expenses, (a) in the image below, servicing etc they buy the service of the features of the product for use in the business and the supplier handles all the servicing, consumables and disposal etc.
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An example of effective PSS is ‘Rolls-Royce (R-R) deliver ‘power-by the-hour” which is that they do not sell the jet engines to the air lines rather than supply them but they ensure that they are efficient and they service them regularly. Another example (illustrated in the image above) is Cannon Photocopiers. Cannon does not sell the photocopiers to the businesses, instead they select a photocopier from their range based on requirements and then every so often they will come out will supplies and service the photo copier, once it is out of date/no longer fit for purpose, they take back the old one and replace it with the newer version or a more suitable one based on data collected.
- Issues with PSS is that it is relatively new so although good working examples are out there, marketing/accounting employees are not sure how to price/set up the contracts due to a lack of experience in the associated risk assessment and also putting into the contract how often it will be serviced etc. There is not much literature out there in how to asses the risks etc mainly due to the fact that each customer would be different and models are not fully developed for companies moving to this strategy.
How is it proposed that product service systems are more sustainable than traditional sales models?
PSS is more sustainable than traditional sales as when the product is with the customer, the supplier services it regularly, can collect data regarding usage and as a result suggest/implement best practice for each individual customer rather than the customer taking the product and through not knowing the best practices, make the product inefficient or possibly not service it as often as it should. This means it may be using more power or damaging internal parts which could have been resolved by more frequent services. In PSS ownership never transfers hands so it is in the suppliers interest to keep the product in its best shape. When the device is no longer fit for purpose (becoming obsolete or if the company requires a bigger/more advanced one) the supplier replaces it and knows how best to redeploy/recycle the older one, by taking still working parts for possibly services to other customers with the same product. They also have a more efficient logistics proceedure when hardware needs to be replaced. Another sustainability bonus is that if the supplier is the owner, it is in their interest to make the product last longer to keep their costs low, thus reducing the product turnover and this is benifitial in reducing the amount of manufacturing and making better use of the products and so the system is more sustainable.
How might this apply in the ICT sector?
Data storage in businesses is usually kept in internal servers as they are more secure and fewer people have access to them. PSS could come into play in internal data storage in a company where the server manufacturer could service the PCs perform any relevent updates etc while still having the security the data being kept within the business. The leasing of laptops, phones and other ICT equipment could be leased rather than sold which keeps the business up to date and efficient but without the massive capital expendature.
Another example of where it could be used it that the likes of function generators and oscilloscopes which need to be calibrated regularly to ensure that they are still accurate could be done on a PSS where rather than the company owning the equipment the provider would provide them with ‘always calibrated’ equipment and ensure that the latest software etc is on them and when a newer generator/scope comes out the business could upgrade easily without having massive expenses or having to deal with the disposal of the previous asset.
Challenges in Metal Recycling
Before diving into the challenges facing metal recycling, one must define what exactly recycling means. Recycling is a process to change materials (waste) into new products to prevent waste of potentially useful materials, reduce the consumption of fresh raw materials, reduce energy usage, reduce air pollution (from incineration) and water pollution (from landfills) by reducing the need for “conventional” waste disposal, and lower greenhouse gas emissions as compared to plastic production. (Wikipedia)
What are the three most important findings you can take from this paper?
- Over the past few decades the number of elements in the periodic table used in products has increased to the point where almost every stable element in the table is now being used for its chemical or physical properties in small amounts in products to make the devices strong/faster etc. The elements that are not used that often but are used for their functional uniqueness that separates them from other metals are known as specialty metals and these metals are harder to recycle and replacements for these metals are hard to come by due to their uniqueness.
- The EOL-RR (End of Life – Recycling Rate) is defined as the ‘fraction of metal in discarded products that is reused in such a way as to retain its functional properties’. The EOL-RR of the specialty metals is <1% where as for metals such as Iron and copper the EOL-RR is >50% (although it is not massively over 50%). The table below shows the EOL-RR of each of the stable metals in the periodic table.
- An example of where consumers have been educated and the efficient methods of recycling the element is used is the Zinc in car batteries where there is an EOL-RR of 90-95%. This shows that if the public and businesses know how to recycle them and the correct procedures are in place, the loop can almost be closed loop system.
Why do specialty metals have such low recycling rates?
The processes involved in recycling are
- Collection (gathering used metals to be recycled)
- Pre-processing (repeated sorting using manual, magnetic, optical etc.)
- End-processing (thermo-dynamic processes optimised for each metal)
Specialty metals have low recycling rates as the recycling process for those metals is not optimised. Since the amount of the elements being used in the products are minute, in order to make it economical to extract the metals, a lot of the products must be collected for processing. Consumers are not fully aware of the elements used in the products they are using, so do not know how to recycle products with a long life time as they are not disposed enough to warrant educating people to sent these to the correct recycling plant and this is why collection rates are so low for these materials. Also with recycling the pre-processing state of the cycle is very labor intensive so is not as scale-able as the end processing stage, this is also a reason why specialty metals have low recycling rates.
What are the activities with the greatest potential for improving metal recycling?
Collection is the biggest downfall for most of the metals. Because the customers do not know what is in their products, when recycled, the specialty metals are not extracted because not enough of these metals are collected to warrant having a process to remove them because of the lack of benefit and the fact that it is only a small amount that they are using in the next product also. If all products were collected and sorted into different categories depending on their chemical make up, the collection rates would be a lot higher and as a result, there would be a greater benefit in improving the processing of both the specialty and widely used metals.
Damien O'Brien 