Festracker™:
product/service
system

Product

The Festrack product, called the Festracker, is a smart wristband that replaces the conventional entrance wristband. Each wristband has an unique serial code, through which the wristbands will be linked to a visitor. This registration happens when the visitor collects the product from the Festrack station. The product consists of two main parts: the band and the smart module containing all the electronics. The wristband will be made of strong woven nylon that allows for the product to be washed to be used at the next festival. The adjustable clasp allows the product to fit on a large range of wrist sizes. The clasp also makes the wristband relatively secure against losing it. The smart module can be easily removed from the band to allow for maintenance, such as replacing the battery. Information can be displayed on a simple backlit black and white screen with a clear interface. The different functions of the product can be navigated by three buttons, one for selecting and the others for left/right or up/down. The case will be made of a strong durable plastic in multiple colours.. The case will be easily openable for maintenance. A special tool is needed for this. The case protects the electronics inside against moisture. The inside contains rubbers that make the product splash proof.

Service

Visitors can pick up their Festracker immediately after entering the festival. The festival pays for the service, so the visitor gets the wristband for free. The visitor only pays for the wristband if the wristband breaks because of recklessness. Right after the entrance of the festival terrain, there will be one big Festrack station, where visitors can come to get their wristbands and let them be serviced. Here, the customer digitally signs some paperwork regarding deposit and the terms of service, after which the device is handed out. The visitor only needs to fill in his or her name and email address for registration. The serial number of the wristband will then be connected to this visitor. The employee that helps the customer through this also helps with a quick setup. An instruction flyer is given to each user, to explain how the wristband works. If this is not clear enough, the station is always open for questions. After pickup, the user can use the wristband for three different things; tracking and finding friends, paying for consumptions and using it as a key for lockers.

Finding friends
After receiving their Festracker, users can pair their personal bracelet with friends. After pairing, the user can find paired friends when they are separated during the festival. The Festracker functions as a compass, pointing where any paired wristbands are located. The user simply activates the tracking function and the wristband points out the last known relative locations of the paired wristbands.

Payment method
The Festracker also serves as a safe cashless payment method on festival grounds. This builds forwards on an already proven, working concept, where users can “top-up” credits or tokens onto their bracelet at centralised pillars and then pay at all festival food or drink stands through an NFC chip. A new addition to this is the sharing or donating of coins. It is often the case that one person buys the drinks for everybody in a round, to shorten the lines at the stands. To provide this system, it is now possible to transfer parts of the balance on your Festracker to the Festracker of another person. Since an NFC chip does not require any battery power, payments can also be realised when the battery of the Festracker dies.

Locker key
With the Festracker comes the benefit of not needing some valuable items on you at all times, being your phone and your wallet. Besides that, festival visitors often bring an extra jacket or bag, which they might want to store in a locker. The Festracker can also function as a digital key for lockers, which users can also rent at the Festrack stands. This is a seperate stand, more away from the crowded festival grounds, where you can rent a locker with the balance on your Festracker. Users can then open and close the locker using the NFC chip in the Festracker and a personal pin code, to prevent theft.

When Festrack is hired for an event by an organisation or facilitator, the complete service will be provided. How this exactly works is described in the business description.

Event Genius (2020). 10 reasons why your festival should go cashless. Retrieved from:
https://www.eventgenius.co.uk/blog/10-reasons-why-your-festival-should-go-cashless-in-2019/

Maintenance + End of Life

Maintenance expenditures can add up to several times the initial investment. When designing the PSS, attention should be paid to the total life cycle cost at investment and the potential renewal of elements in and around the organization. Design for maintenance is about all of the product’s design processes that are focused on planning all the actions necessary for ensuring its sustainability during the life cycle. The design of the PSS strongly influences the performance during later stages of its life cycle and it determines how easy the production, use, maintenance and disposal of the product will be.

Maintenance and disposal go hand in hand. Therefore, at the design phase of the PSS, it is not only important to design for maintenance, but also to design for the end-of-life of the product. The components of the PSS should flow back into the economic system for new products instead of becoming useless waste. Smart end-of-life aspects should be incorporated into the PSS, so that it will be suited for the circular economy over its entire life span. It is important to find out what the aspects of design for maintenance and end-of-life imply for the PSS. The design strategy for maintenance and circularity for both the product and the service will be discussed before getting to the implications.

Composition of the PSS

To determine a strategy to design for maintenance and end-of-life, the key intervention points of the PSS should be clear. These intervention points can then be handled individually to make the entire product fit for easy maintenance and circularity. Both the product and the service contain components that should be taken into account.

The product and its production consist of the following components:
- Wristband
- Case
- Display
- Light
- Battery
- Other electronics
- Assembly

The service and its processes consist of the following components:
- Station - Location where visitors can pick up their festival tracker and have it receive service.
- Special exit gates - Lets the user only leave the terrain if he or she hands in the products.
- Lockers - Can be opened with the wristbands.
- Customer service - Answers questions of users.
- Server infrastructure - Needed for the products to realize payments and exchange locations.
- PCs, scanners and software - Needed to register the wristbands and alter their data.
- Transport - Makes sure that the PSS arrives at the festival.

Design for Maintenance

When designing for maintenance, a strategy has to be chosen. Designing for maintenance can be done by working on the reliability, maintainability or supportability. Reliability is the ability of a product or system to perform a required function under specific environmental and operational conditions for a stated period of time. In other words, it tells us how long the product or service will perform its intended function without a breakdown. Maintainability is the probability that a system is retained or restored to a specified condition when maintenance is performed by qualified personnel using specified procedure and resources.

It can also be considered as how easy, quick and safe the system can be restored or maintained. Respectively increasing the life cycle of the product, the maintenance itself can be reactive, preventive, predictive or proactive. The product lives longest with self-maintenance or when the product is maintenance free. Supportability is the characteristic of an asset to influence the ease with which logistic resources can be available at the right time at the right place. One might also say that it is the ability to maintain the inbuilt reliability and to perform scheduled and unscheduled maintenance according to the plan with minimum costs. Taking all the mentioned components and determining how to design them for maintenance and how to maintain them will result in the necessary strategy.

Product
Since the product should be cheap, it will be difficult to work on the reliability, since this will result in more expensive parts and therefore a more expensive product. The thing that is most important to work on is maintainability. Any problem with the product should easily be fixed. Most of the repairs will be done reactively. The other types of repairs take a lot of time when the inventory runs into thousands and are therefore more expensive. This would not be wise, since the products will cost around €7- each. There are several guidelines for maintainability that are important for the product:
- The materials should not prolong maintenance activities.
- Fasteners should accelerate maintenance activities.
- The product should be designed so that it can only be maintained in the right way.
- Components that are regularly replaced need to be easy to handle.
- Guarantee safety by the design itself.
- The product should be modular.
- Position components that often need to be maintained at an easily accessible place.

The wristband should be able to detach from the case so that any damaged bands can be exchanged instantly. The case itself should be able to open without any difficulties. This will make it possible to replace an empty battery directly. Because of the simplicity, the band and the battery can be replaced at the service station at the festival. Any other defects can solve the user’s problem by replacing the product for a new one. These defects can be repaired later on. Everything inside the case can be removed by opening the case and simply taking the modular parts out. Maintenance should be fairly simple and can be carried out by personnel with a variety of backgrounds. To make replacement easier, the battery should come out first. The rest of the electronics can be screwed out of the case as one module group. The screen should be detachable after this module group is taken out of the case. The light and the other electronics are replaceable. It would be best if the product was completely modular, but with electronics this is not always that easy. Some modules will contain multiple components because of how these components are connected. The production process only consists of the assembly of the mentioned parts and therefore it should not be necessary to design it for maintenance. None of the components will be painted, since this makes it more difficult to maintain them. All colours will be provided by colouring the plastics at the production phase.

The supportability of the product is already very good, since any problem with the product will be solved by exchanging it for a new one. This support will not only be offered from the station, but also over the telephone. The modularity of the product helps to perform maintenance and therefore increases the supportability. Every product gets a number, which helps to register the product to a user. This number also helps to keep track of the average lifetime of the product. This can in turn prevent unnecessary production. All performed maintenance should be registered to find out how all the components perform during normal use. This will help to perfect the product in the future.

Service
The service provides great supportability for the product, since it is built to maintain the product and its functions. Because of this big role the service plays in the functions of the product, it should fail as little as possible. The service should therefore be centered on reliability. Preventive repairs should be done to make sure that the service will always be operational. If one of the components does fail, spare components should always be redundant to replace any non-functioning ones when necessary. Since the service components cost more money, it would also be more cost efficient to make them more reliable.

To maintain inbuilt reliability, all components of which the service consists will be checked on a regular basis. Preventive repairs will try to avoid any failures during festivals. The special exit gates need to withstand environmental influences, since they will be placed outside. The lockers will be provided by another company. The customer service does not need a specific maintenance strategy. The server is responsible for the safe distribution of all the data regarding money and locations. For the key functions of the product, it is of utter importance that this component will never shut down. The software of the PCs and scanners will be updated regularly to remove bugs and improve functions. Used materials should have a verified reliability to minimise the chance of unexpected system behaviour.

Design for circularity

A strategy has to be chosen to accomplish circularity. All the mentioned components have to be as circular as they can be. To come up with the needed strategy, the end-of-life will be discussed for each component. When designing and manufacturing the product, the following steps can be taken:
- Designing out waste.
- Designing for resource efficiency.
- Designing for deconstruction and disassembly.
- Using more renewable energy.
- Reducing embodied carbon over a whole building life cycle.
- Developing resource efficient products that are easy to repair and disassemble.
- Using delivery and return logistics to recover materials.
- Responsible sourcing of raw materials.
- Designing to minimise waste in product refurbishment and maximise reuse.
- Moving to alternative business models (like PSSs).

It should not be forgotten that we are not only talking about the product. The service that comes with the product also has to be as circular as possible. Repair, reuse, refurbishment, remanufacture and recycle play a major role through the entire system and its design.

Product
The wristband and the case should be made of durable plastics that can be reused. The straps should easily come off so that they can be cleaned. The display will most likely be custom made LCDs like the ones you can find in your average calculator. This type of display has a long life span and should not form a problem regarding the life cycle of the product. The light should be an LED, since these are cheap and do not consume a lot of energy. Rechargeable batteries can be used numerous times and are easy to recycle. This makes them better for the environment. Research has to be done if the benefits of these rechargeable batteries are worth the extra costs. The other electronics give the wristband its functions. It is difficult to assess how long these parts function, how recyclable they are and therefore how durable they are. More research has to be done to find this out. Easy disassembly is necessary if these parts can be recycled. If they can be repaired or refurbished this can also result in lower costs for new parts. Every defect product must be checked to see if parts of it can still be of use in new products. This will be possible, since the modules are easily removed and replaced. Broken modules should be recycled. No component will simply be thrown away. The assembly can be done with a negligible environmental impact and is therefore fit for a circular economy.

Service
The station, special exit gates and lockers will be present at the festivals. They will be made of sturdy and durable materials. They can easily be repaired when they don’t function properly anymore. The customer service, like the production process, does not have a big impact on the environment. The server infrastructure consists mostly of durable hardware and it should not have a large impact on the environment. The PCs and scanners, just like the server infrastructure, are necessary for the functionality of the product. The most durable and environmentally friendly option should be chosen, but they cannot be excluded from the plan. The software of the PCs and scanners has little impact on the environment. Transport of the products and service to the festival does have an impact on the environment. The most durable option is to drive electric, but this can only be done if the budget allows this.

Implications

To design for maintenance, the product has to be as modular as possible to improve maintainability, which leads to quick and easy repairs. The service has to be as durable as possible to improve reliability, which leads to a lower failure rate. This should be done as long as the costs do not run up too high. Designing for maintenance is important, but it should not affect the feasibility of the venture. The entire system is already designed for supportability, since the built in reliability can be maintained and maintenance can easily be performed. The PSS should be realized in such a way that it will be easy for us, but also for the festival to implement it. It should adjust to the festival infrastructure, so that it will complement the experience of visitors.

To design for circularity, the PSS has to be as durable as possible as long as the budget enables us to do this. We will manage our resources as much as possible. The product will be reused, recycled and disassembled and we will try to design and manufacture for this. The PSS will have a long life cycle and the business model is suited for this. Because the products will be rented out, Festrack will stay in possession of the discarded items. Recollecting and reusing them is a part of the business model, since this increases the value of the products substantially. Recollecting the used products also makes it easy to recycle and repair them. Because of the easy disassembly, the product can evolve over time by substituting parts of it for more sustainable alternatives.

The next step is to implement these strategies for maintenance and circularity. The results of these strategies should be measured and discussed within the team. This way the strategy can be adjusted when it is necessary.

Possible variants

The final product fulfills all functions as stated in the requirements. Some requirements can only be evaluated in real live test scenarios. A physical product is needed for this. In order to create a final physical product, one or more prototypes need to be made first in order to test the product on functionality, durability, the interface and other aspects. After the prototype has been evaluated, a trial should take place on a smaller scale festival. This can help to evaluate the user experience and system functionality.

In possible variants of the product, additional functions can be added to the wristband, for example the possibility to have a light show using all the backlight screens synchronised. The product may also be off value to different markets, for example aimed at families visiting a theme park or a swimming pool where it can replace the locker key or entrance wristband. It could also be interesting to investigate different tiers in pricing. A lower tier only offers the payment method and locker function, but the friend-find option must be “unlocked” for a small fee.

Another opportunity for further development would be combining the current Festrack system with a mobile application. This way, you could increase the balance on your Festracker using your mobile phone. The reason why we did not do this in the first place, lies in the fact that you would then hand tasks from the Festrack system over to the mobile phone, while the Festracker is supposed to make festival visitors less relying on their smartphones. In the case of a mobile application, it would be all or nothing. Then we would either make the Festracker redundant by making an application to fulfil all the Festracker functions, or make the user experience smartphone-free.