Reuse of Electric Motors in Consumer Products Design and Analysis of an Electronic Data Log

Product takeback calls for sound strategies of product recovery management. One such strategy is the reuse of the components of a product. There are consumer products such as power tools whose most expensive component, the electric motor, offers potential for reuse. Empirical evidence reveals that the lifetime of a motor often exceeds the lifetime of the product using it. This article focuses on the reuse of electric motors. For this purpose, a novel circuit was developed that measures, computes, and records parameters strongly correlated with the degradation of a motor during the use stage of the product. This circuit, called electronic data log (EDL), provides valuable insights into the usage patterns of products. The data recorded during the use stage are retrieved after product takeback as a basis for reuse decisions. In this article, the trade-off between higher initial manufacturing cost caused by the EDL and cost savings from the reuse of used motors is analyzed. The problem of misclassifications of used motors is also addressed. It is shown that the return rate of used products is the critical parameter determining the economic efficiency of a motorreuse strategy based on EDLs. The analysis shows that the implementation of EDLs in products as an enabler for motor reuse may be associated with large cost savings.