How User Manuals Support the Diagnosis of Common Faults in Household Appliances: an Analysis of 150 Manuals

Beatriz Pozo Arcos (), Conny Bakker and Ruud Balkenende
Additional contact information
Beatriz Pozo Arcos: TU Delft
Conny Bakker: TU Delft
Ruud Balkenende: TU Delft

Circular Economy and Sustainability, 2023, vol. 3, issue 1, 535-555

Abstract: Abstract Product repairs are at the core of sustainable consumption and user manuals can play a relevant role in facilitating them. They are the accredited source of product information for end users and are therefore sought as an important means for the diagnosis and subsequent repair of household appliances. However, despite increasing societal demand for repairable products, few studies have been conducted on the extent to which manuals contribute to the fault diagnosis and subsequent repair process. In this study, we analysed current guidance provided by manuals for the diagnosis process, answering the research question: ‘To what extent do user manuals provide sufficient information to diagnose the most frequent faults in household appliances?’ We examined the diagnosis instructions provided in the user manuals of four different household appliances using data on the appliances’ most frequently failing components, and a framework that considers three steps towards a successful diagnosis: fault detection, fault location, and fault isolation. In total, we analysed 150 user manuals of 48 brands available on the European market. We show that manuals do not instruct the diagnosis of frequently failing components. They mainly refer to causes of failure and directly recommend corrective actions after fault detection. Thus, they rarely include a three-step fault diagnosis process to identify and isolate a faulty component. Based on these results, we have extended the framework for the process of fault diagnosis to include a step from cause identification to corrective action. Both routes, the component-oriented and the cause-oriented route in fault diagnosis, should be considered during the design of products for easy fault diagnosis, and should be included in future regulations that address product reparability.

Keywords: Troubleshooting; Fault diagnosis; Design for repair; Circular economy; Product design; Sustainable consumption (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s43615-022-00195-5 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:circec:v:3:y:2023:i:1:d:10.1007_s43615-022-00195-5

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.springer.com/journal/43615

DOI: 10.1007/s43615-022-00195-5

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Circular Economy and Sustainability from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().