4. Analysis Approach
4.4 Part 3: How the case companies can enhance their circular business operations with Product-
4.4.5 Schoeller Plast: optimizing the crate management system
Schoeller Plast has proven to having innovated consistently crates production. However, the consumption of the product is rather linear than circular. The crates stored at the beverage producer facility are not used efficiently as they remain empty for long periods and do not optimize the energy, materials and labor encapsulated.
For this reason, Schoeller Plast would benefit from another PSS in addition to what the company already offers its customers today. More specifically, as illustrated in Table 4, the adoption of renting and sharing would be beneficial not only to the company’s business, but also to the environment due to the reduced impact. Schoeller Plast currently offers product-related services throughout a back system of the crates. By offering a take-back service, the company can reuse the crates over time (Schoeller Plast, 2019).
It has been considered a renting and sharing type of PSS, where the user does not have unlimited and individual access and others can use the crates at other times. This type of PSS would allow Schoeller Plast to manage the crates between the beverage producers, avoiding that the crates would remain empty and unused for long times
88 at the beverage producers’ production plants. This option is also believed to be advantageous from a financial sustainability and feasibility point of view. By renting the product, the beverage producers would be able to better forecast the future demand of crates and, in turn, the future revenues (Tukker, 2004). This contributes to ensuring current Schoeller Plast’s customers an always efficient crate and reduce the conflicts arising from product deficiencies or failures (i.e. crate breakages) and the associated customer service costs.
In this regard, the company finds that IoT would allow to gather valuable information over the way the crates are sorted and used by the beverage producers. By the use of IoT technologies the sorting and recollection of the crates would be highly automated. For instance, by placing a sensor in the beverage producer warehouse, the company would be able to know in real time the number of unused crates across its customers allowing for a more intense use of the crates. Moreover, it has been suggested that IoT could make possible the thriving of new services for beverage producers that ensure the good condition and position of what is contained in the crate based on selected parameters. With this regard, IoT sensors are currently able to communicate a wide range of data such as temperature, humidity and shocks. Moreover, by receiving the position of the crate in real-time, the beverage producer would always be able to verify that the crate, and its content, has not been stolen (J. Pedersen, personal communication, February 2, 2019).
In this regard, during the data collection, the company has stressed out how IoT would allow to gather valuable information over the way the crates are sorted and used by the beverage producers. By the use of IoT technologies the sorting and recollection of the crates would be highly automated. For instance, by placing a sensor in the beverage producer warehouse, the company would be able to know in real time the number of unused crates across its customers allowing for a more intense use of the crates. Moreover, it has been suggested that IoT could make possible the thriving of new services for beverage producers that ensure the good condition and position of what is contained in the crate based on selected parameters. With this regard, IoT sensors are currently able to communicate a wide range of data such as temperature, humidity and shocks.
Moreover, by receiving the position of the crate in real-time, the beverage producer would always be able to verify that the crate, and its content, has not been stolen. It has been discovered that these data would be extremely valuable for beverage crate producers and for Schoeller Plast (J. Pedersen, personal communication, February 2, 2019). This is aligned with the suggestions given from an CE expert from the external perspective, who has highlighted the importance of the monitoring of the location of the asset, both for an eased logistic and from an insurance perspective (D. L. Vind, personal communication, April 10, 2019). The mentioned implementation of PSSs and IoT is displayed in Figure 24.
As Table 5 illustrates, these optimizations would not only be a further business opportunity but also a concrete possibility to increase the qualities of the renting and sharing PSS. By controlling the crates through IoT systems, Schoeller Plast would confer higher reliability and durability, extending the loop and the usage of the materials and energy embedded by sharing them between the customers if not used for long times.
89 Yet, it can be concluded that IoT would increase the serviceability of the PSS itself by virtualizing the management of the crates. Also, by monitoring the condition of the crates and by predicting the needed maintenance, the overall average performance of the crates is also increased.
Figure 24: PSS and IoT application to Schoeller Plast’s activities. Own creation.
By linking the use of IoT to the renting and sharing PSS, the serviceability would also be increased. On the other hand, it is believed that IoT would not contribute to an improving around the feature, conformance, aesthetics or perceived quality of the PSS and the product design would not vary. Yet, the functions of the crate would not be changed, and the assembly process would not need to be redesigned (J. B. Pedersen, personal communication, February 27, 2019).
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