Standards Development

Scope

This horizontal standard provides generic methods to assess the following aspects:

 1. the ability of products to be repaired

2. the ability of products, or parts thereof, to be reused

3. the ability of products to be upgraded

This document includes generic criteria and methods relevant for assessing the ability of certain parts to be removed from products for the purpose of repair, reuse or upgrade. The methods in this document include product-related and support-related criteria when the product is placed on the market, taking into account knowledge of parts that are likely to fail, need replacing, or have reuse potential.

The decision whether a product should be repaired, reused or upgraded, is dependent on a range of factors such as health and safety, as well as economic, legal and environmental aspects. However, the question of whether it is reasonable to repair, reuse or upgrade products is outside of the scope of this document.

Purpose

Environmental aspects become increasingly more important globally, due to the impact of humans on ecosystems, climate change, pollution due to energy production, and depletion of natural resources. Although there are requirements for resource efficiency ac ross most geographies, to date, the focus has been mostly on the energy usage of products, mostly due to absence of adequate metrics, including absence of standards for assessing material efficiency related aspects.

Following the increased focus on circular economy in Europe and many other countries, there is increasing attention on the “preservation of (natural) resources” by retaining the value of resources already in the economy. The sustainable management and efficient use of natural resources is addressed by the UN, in particular under the sustainable development goal number 12, Responsible consumption and production, where, by 2030 society is expected to achieve the goal to substantially reduce waste generation t hrough for instance, prevention, reduction, recycling and reuse. This document is of direct relevance to this goal, addressing extension of product lifetime by means of repairing, re -using and upgrading products.

The reparability, reusability and upgradeability of a product is a characteristic of the product and its parts, which contributes to material efficiency and circularity by increasing the durability (technical lifetime) of a product.

Different jurisdictions already have or are about to introduce product reparability scoring systems, sometimes including upgradeability and re-useability parameters. This new International Standard is expected to harmonise assessment and facilitate the provision of substantiated claims of reparability, reusability and upgradeability of products.

In the course of the project, TC111 should consider aligning the format of RRU parameters with the IEC/ISO 82474-1 data exchange format to facilitate B2B data exchange through the supply chain and the IEC common data dictionary (CDD) to improve machine-readability of data.

Information for NCs when reviewing this project proposal:

The proposed project is based on the European EN 45554 which has been offered by CENELEC and CEN to IEC. The EN 45554 standard falls under the durability framework of EN 45552 which is identified as a relevant document to this project.

The draft provided in the annex of this NP is the already published EN 45554 with initial adaptations for an IEC standard (e.g. deletion of the European Forward) and the following additions in the annexes related to recent regulatory developments:

• Suggested parameters for considering part serialisation and calibration

• Suggested parameters for assessing availability of software updates

• New annex B (informative) includes example how a repairability score is being calculated for smartphones and tablets per EU regulation 2023/1669

Please note that other European specific parts of the EN 45554 normative references, terminology) will still need to be adapted for an IEC standard. Because the changes that will be necessary to the document, the recommendation is to start the project at CD as the next stage.

The proposed standard is intended to be one of a series of IEC standards related to assessing overall product durability (product lifetime) as identified in the IEC TC111 SBP for IEC standardization. RRU is one component of this assessment. The RRU standar d is proposed to be the second standard in the series (i.e. IEC 6XXXX-2), reserving the first standard in the series (i.e. IEC 6XXXX -1) to provide a framework for durability assessment. Durability assessment, including RRU, can be used as input data in design for durability and extending product lifetime. Design for RRU is not included within the scope of this proposal.