In 2019, Philips developed and deployed tailored circular economy training for all its product architects. This is the first of a series of planned functional-specific trainings that translate circular economy principles to the specific Philips reality of functional experts. The target audience consisted of approximately 500 individuals, distributed across sites globally and across very diverse business units ranging from electric toothbrushes to large medical scanners.

The training was developed in-house as classroom training with two main objectives:

1) create awareness and a shared language of circular design options relevant for Philips

2) start defining granular, business-unit-specific design criteria.

After successful planning and alignment amongst the various business unit leaders and innovation managers, the training sessions were held across the globe in the second half of 2019. Architects are now translating the new knowledge into business-unit and product-specific design criteria that will be implemented into the respective quality management systems.