Transforming circularity through CoDesign
Circular solutions often remain limited to individual products, isolated processes or small-scale pilot projects. To make circular value creation competitive at scale, companies need to connect decisions that are usually made separately: which products and components to circulate, how products are designed, how production systems are configured, how used products are returned and assessed, and how circular business models create value.
TranscCoDe is an international research and development project that brings these decisions together through CoDesign. The project integrates product design, production systems, reverse logistics and business models to support scalable and economically competitive circular value creation across industries. Its aim is to help circular practices move beyond niche applications and become viable mainstream business models.
Connecting product design, production and return flows
Products intended for reuse, refurbishment or remanufacturing cannot be designed independently of the systems that will take them back, inspect them and prepare them for another lifecycle. Likewise, production and remanufacturing systems need to accommodate products and components of different ages, conditions and configurations.
TranscCoDe will develop a CoDesign framework that connects:
- Circular product and component design
- Adaptable and reconfigurable production processes
- Reverse logistics and take-back systems
- Reuse, refurbishment and remanufacturing strategies
- Testing and quality assurance
- Portfolio and value-network planning
- Circular business models, and
- Digital support such as ai-based testing and interoperable digital product passports.
The purpose is not simply to optimise one stage of a product’s lifecycle. It is to help companies make coordinated decisions across design, production, return flows, data management and business development.
Scaling circular solutions beyond individual pilots
Many companies already experiment with circular products, take-back systems and remanufacturing. Scaling these approaches is difficult because technical, operational and commercial decisions depend on one another.
A product may be technically suitable for reuse, for example, but difficult to collect, inspect or resell. A remanufacturing process may be feasible, but only if the necessary information follows the product throughout its lifecycle. A circular business model may be attractive, but only if product design, logistics and production can deliver it reliably and competitively.
TranscCoDe addresses these interdependencies as one connected challenge. The project will develop and validate cross-industry CoDesign methods, modular toolkits and Digital Product Passport solutions intended to support transfer to wider industrial practice.
Bringing research and industry together across Europe
TranscCoDe brings together 13 companies and five research institutions from Austria, Denmark, Germany and Sweden. The international project is managed by Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. The participating research environments include expertise in product engineering, production science, circular economy, lifecycle engineering, business innovation and digitalization.
The Swedish consortium consists of Linköping University and ABB Electrification Sweden. The Swedish project is coordinated by Erik Sundin, professor at Linköping University, and the Swedish partners work closely with the wider consortium in Germany, Austria and Denmark.
Who can benefit from TranscCoDe?
TranscCoDe will be particularly relevant to companies and organisations working with:
- Durable products and components with potential for multiple lifecycles
- Reuse, refurbishment or remanufacturing
- Product modularity, upgrading and disassembly
- Adaptable production and remanufacturing systems
- Reverse logistics and take-back networks
- Testing, condition assessment and quality assurance
- Digital product passports and lifecycle data
- Circular product portfolios and business models, or
- Environmental and economic evaluation of circular strategies.
The project also aims to communicate useful findings, frameworks and good practices to industry, research and policy stakeholders through accessible formats such as case studies, guides and interactive workshops.
Follow TranscCoDe
The project is now getting started. This space will be updated as the partners develop the CoDesign framework, work with industrial use cases and begin sharing methods, experiences and results.
Are you working with product design, production, take-back systems, remanufacturing, lifecycle data or circular business models? We welcome contact from companies, researchers and other stakeholders interested in making circular value creation work at industrial scale.
