Design for Repair: Making Product Longevity Measurable
Your laptop screen flickers once, then dies. The repair quote arrives: $800 for a machine that cost $900 eighteen months ago. You know the drill.
At INDEED Innovation, we spend our days inside products most people never see opened. Over the past decade, we’ve dismantled everything from coffee machines to industrial equipment, documenting each screw, cataloguing every failure point, timing how long it takes trained technicians to reach broken components.
What we’ve discovered challenges how the design world thinks about durability, value, and customer relationships. More importantly, it reveals why circularity is the only path to sustainability.
Beyond the R-Strategies: Where Repair Fits in the Circular Hierarchy
Traditional circular economy frameworks position repair within a hierarchy of resource strategies. The R-ladder (refuse, rethink, redesign, reduce, reuse, repair, refurbish, recycle, recover) places repair relatively low on the preference scale. This positioning, while theoretically sound, misses repair’s unique power as a catalyst for systemic change.
Systematic approaches to repair transform how products are conceived, manufactured, and valued throughout their lifecycles. When we rethought product and component architecture completely for our circular screwdriver project, shifting the focus from efficiency to usability and repairability broadened our industrial design perspective and created room for innovation.
The measurement gap between intention and implementation has plagued circular economy initiatives. Traditional design metrics capture what manufacturers prioritize: production costs, material efficiency, performance benchmarks, aesthetic appeal. Repairability existed in the realm of good intentions and post-launch discoveries.
But to achieve good design for repairability additional metrics are needed – otherwise design would go into wrong directions: Repair Scoring allows informed decisions about how to handle different design and material tasks. A typical repair score consists of three different evaluation criteria: Failure Probability, Diagnostic Clarity and Physical Access.
Three Dimensions of Repairability
Failure Probability
Components fail at predictable rates, but most products treat all parts as equally permanent. Mapping component failure rates against business impact identifies which parts deserve design attention. A frequently failing $2 switch matters more than a reliable $50 processor.
Diagnostic Clarity
Broken products rarely announce their problems clearly. Products with built-in error codes, accessible test points, and logical troubleshooting sequences transform repair from detective work into routine maintenance.
Physical Access The most elegantly diagnosed problem means nothing if you can’t reach the broken component without destroying the product. Successful repairable products follow access hierarchy principles: frequently failing components get priority access.
How Repair Scoring Works
Systematic product disassembly reveals the gap between design intention and repair reality. Documenting every step, timing each action, and cataloguing tool requirements exposes design decisions that create repair nightmares.
Component evaluation across the three dimensions creates weighted scores reflecting real-world repair priorities. The highest-impact improvements often come from clearer diagnosis rather than easier access, or from designing failure out entirely.
Research by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre showed expert teams achieved variations of less than 0.2 points on a 5-point scale when evaluating identical products, proving quantitative repairability assessment delivers objective, reliable results.
Implementation Architecture
Repairability concepts influence business model innovation toward service-based revenue and circular economy architectures. Once you break with the make-break-waste-paradigm, you see how everything becomes connected and re-evaluated. The resources you invest in production and manufacturing can loop infinitely and can become an asset for your business.
INDEED Innovation, Stepping into the circular economy with confidence (2022)
Based on our experience across industries and organization sizes, successful repairability transformation requires systematic capability development rather than project-based initiatives.
Pilot Program Selection
Initial repairability projects should balance learning opportunity with business impact. We typically recommend focusing on products with high warranty costs, frequent service requirements, or premium market positioning where repairability can become competitive differentiation.
The most successful pilots target specific, measurable improvements rather than comprehensive product redesigns. Improving access to the three most failure-prone components often produces more impact than extensive architectural changes.
Measurement Infrastructure
Repairability improvements require measurement systems that track progress and validate results. This includes repair score tracking, warranty cost analysis, customer satisfaction monitoring, and service revenue measurement.
Organizations that establish baseline measurements before improvement initiatives can quantify impact and build business cases for continued investment. Those that skip measurement struggle to demonstrate value and secure resources for scaling.
Cultural Integration
Long-term repairability success requires embedding repair considerations into existing design processes rather than treating them as add-on requirements. This means training design teams, updating evaluation criteria, and incentivizing improvements in repairability metrics alongside traditional performance measures.
Future Outlook
For businesses, it’s a chance to enhance customer loyalty and potentially open up new revenue streams through repair services and the sale of spare parts. Consumers benefit from longer-lasting products and reduced repair costs… Economically, encouraging repairs can boost local job markets focused on repair services, and environmentally, it helps reduce waste and the demand for raw materials.”
Anna C W De Matos, Founder of the Circular Library Network
Legislative momentum around Right to Repair continues accelerating globally. The European Union’s eco-design requirements now mandate spare parts availability and repair manuals for specific appliance categories. France’s repair index requirements force manufacturers to quantify and publish repairability scores.
Organizations proactively developing repairability capabilities position themselves advantageously for regulatory compliance while avoiding the costs and constraints of reactive adaptation.
Beyond regulatory compliance, consumer preferences increasingly favor brands demonstrating environmental responsibility through product longevity and repairability. Our market research indicates willingness to pay 15-25% premiums for demonstrably repairable products across most consumer categories.
Ready to Transform Your Products into Circular Assets?
Your products contain untapped value locked behind poor repairability scores. Book a free assessment call to discover how companies like yours are turning repair challenges into competitive advantages.
FAQ
Basic scoring requires spreadsheet software, digital cameras, standard disassembly tools, and systematic documentation processes. Advanced implementations might include CAD integration and database systems, but these aren’t necessary for significant improvements.
The most common error is treating repairability as purely technical when it’s fundamentally a business strategy question. Successful companies integrate repairability into their value proposition and business model.
The EU’s Right to Repair directive currently covers household appliances including washing machines, dishwashers, refrigerators, and displays. France’s repair index applies to smartphones, laptops, televisions, washing machines, and electric lawnmowers. The European Commission is expanding coverage to include smartphones and tablets through ecodesign regulations, with ongoing studies for additional product categories.
Repair obligations vary by product category and jurisdiction. Under EU ecodesign regulations, manufacturers must provide spare parts for washing machines and dishwashers for 10 years after the last unit is sold. For smartphones and tablets under proposed regulations, spare parts availability is required for 5 years (smartphones) to 6 years (tablets), with software security updates for at least 5 years and functionality updates for at least 3 years.
The EU now mandates spare parts availability and repair manuals for specific product categories. France requires published repairability scores for electronics. The European Commission’s Joint Research Centre has validated repair scoring methodologies for smartphones and tablets, indicating broader regulatory adoption is likely.
Larissa Scherrer
Marketing Strategy
Brand Positioning
Social Media Strategy
