Ecological holistic assessment for production technologies

Part of: Seliger, Günther (Ed.): Innovative solutions : proceedings / 11th Global Conference on Sustainable Manufacturing, Berlin, Germany, 23rd - 25th September, 2013. - Berlin: Universitätsverlag der TU Berlin, 2013. - ISBN 978-3-7983-2609-5 (online). - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:83-opus4-40276. - pp. 213–218.Treating the natural environment in a responsible manner is becoming a key challenge for manufacturing companies. This challenge also regards the planning, implementation and modernization of production technologies. In this case, a new technology should not only have economic advantages, such as higher productivity or flexibility, but should address ecological aspects as well. Many existing approaches only focus on air pollution, measured in CO2, and therefore consider only one ecological dimension. So these approaches disregard other effects on the natural environment, such as water and soil pollution. Only through a holistic approach, the influences of a production technology on the environment can be considered completely and comprehensively. The following article describes a holistic ecological assessment approach and illustrates this with an example. This approach enables manufacturing companies to ecologically assess production technologies in a holistic way

Ecological analysis of manufacturing systems focusing on the identification of variety-induced non value adding emissions

Part of: Seliger, Günther (Ed.): Innovative solutions : proceedings / 11th Global Conference on Sustainable Manufacturing, Berlin, Germany, 23rd - 25th September, 2013. - Berlin: Universitätsverlag der TU Berlin, 2013. - ISBN 978-3-7983-2609-5 (online). - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:83-opus4-40276. - pp. 66-71Today manufacturing companies need to raise their awareness about emissions (e.g. CO2 equivalents) and their origins within a manufacturing system. The identification of origins of emissions becomes progressively difficult because of the customer and competition driven increase in product and process variants and the corresponding high level of complexity. Therefore, it is necessary to enhance the ecological transparency in manufacturing systems. This paper introduces an assessment methodology which increases the ecological transparency through the identification of variety-induced ecological effects. Furthermore, the developed methodology enables the user to detect starting points for an ecological optimization of a manufacturing system by the use of organizational measures. The effects of influencing variables are presented on the basis of a case study. The obtained results allow manufacturing companies to reveal and reduce variety-induced non value adding emissions

Modularization in material flow simulation for managing production releases in remanufacturing

Remanufacturing is recognized as a major circular economy option to recover and upgrade functions from post-use products. However, the inefficiencies associated with operations, mainly due to the uncertainty and variability of material flows and product conditions, undermine the growth of remanufacturing. With the objective of supporting the design and management of more proficient and robust remanufacturing processes, this paper proposes a generic and reconfigurable simulation model of remanufacturing systems. The developed model relies upon a modular framework that enables the user to handle multiple process settings and production control policies, among which token-based policies. Customizable to the characteristics of the process under analysis, this model can support logistics performance evaluation of different production control policies, thus enabling the selection of the optimal policy in specific business contexts. The proposed model is applied to a real remanufacturing environment in order to validate and demonstrate its applicability and benefits in the industrial settings

Green factory Bavaria - knowledge transfer to increase energy efficiency in manufacturing

The Green Factory Bavaria enables companies to gain knowledge about running energy efficient factories. Benefits of joining companies are: Development of energy-saving potential by means of - innovative processes - intelligent utilization - efficient control engineering - optimized power electronics - new materials. Establishment of a Bavarian network "Energy Efficient Production" Individual research, development and consulting projects Development checklists, methods, learning materials Energy efficiency potential quick check Training of professionals Publication of technical publications and books Joint participation in conferences trade fairs in-country and abroad

Saving product lives in global and local remanufacturing networks: a scientific and commercial work report and an outlook

Remanufacturing which is becoming the standard term for recycling by manufacturing “good as new” products from used products in an industrial (series production) scale, looks back to an almost 65 year long history. It started in the United States of America and in the United Kingdom of Great Britain in 1940 – the time when World War II fully occupied their industries with aircraft, tanks and weaponry manufacturing. While no private car (not to say spare parts) production existed in the US for five years in those times, remanufacturing obviously offered the only way to keep America’s cars on the road. Meanwhile, not only the world wars, but also the cold war belong to history and do not influence our industrial economies too much any more. Industrial production of private industrial products, whether it comes to cars, electric or electronic goods, does not at all suffer from undercapacity any more. In most areas, the ever-increasing productivity has led to overcapacities, making up to date products of the finest technology and performance available in any quantity and at even falling prices. So, where is the chance and where is the future for remanufacturing under such economic circumstances? From the first authors’ work for both the manufacturing and the remanufacturing sector over the past 25 years, extended by an international viewpoint in particular from the second author’s research, the following work report and outlook about remanufacturing can be given in 10 theses

Opportunities for remanufactured electronic products from developing countries : hypotheses to characterise the perspectives of a global remanufacturing industry

Global legislative and market pressures are increasingly enforcing the concept of product life cycle management (LCM), or product stewardship, particularly in the electronics sector. Thereby, from an environmental perspective, end-of-life regulations and obligations require the technology managers of Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) in developed countries to consider remanufacturing and reuse as an attractive economic alternative to expensive recycling and the final disposal of electronic products. Furthermore, developing countries offer an expanding market for affordable quality spare parts, especially for the repair of cellular phones and household appliances. These dissimilar markets could be complementary from the perspective of the remanufacturing sector. Additional requirements of this relatively informal sector in developing countries must be considered, specifically product cleaning processes and test routines that may necessitate the transfer of technologies. Also,training and formalisation are needed to deliver quality services in the repair sector of developing countries. Potential market niches may also exist for inexpensive products from a formalised remanufacturing industry. Therefore, by moving from international isolation to global integration, remanufacturing and repair will profit from networking and synergy efforts in four arenas of the electronic product life cycle chain: market participants, products and applications, neighbouring technologies, and international regions.6 page

Saving product lives in global and local remanufacturing networks : a scientific and commercial work report and an outlook

Remanufacturing which is becoming the standard term for recycling by manufacturing “good as new” products from used products in an industrial (series production) scale, looks back to an almost 65 year long history. It started in the United States of America and in the United Kingdom of Great Britain in 1940 – the time when World War II fully occupied their industries with aircraft, tanks and weaponry manufacturing. While no private car (not to say spare parts) production existed in the US for five years in those times, remanufacturing obviously offered the only way to keep America’s cars on the road. Meanwhile, not only the world wars, but also the cold war belong to history and do not influence our industrial economies too much any more. Industrial production of private industrial products, whether it comes to cars, electric or electronic goods, does not at all suffer from undercapacity any more. In most areas, the ever-increasing productivity has led to overcapacities, making up to date products of the finest technology and performance available in any quantity and at even falling prices. So, where is the chance and where is the future for remanufacturing under such economic circumstances? From the first authors’ work for both the manufacturing and the remanufacturing sector over the past 25 years, extended by an international viewpoint in particular from the second author’s research, the following work report and outlook about remanufacturing can be given in 10 theses

Remanufacturing and upcycling of an industrial robot handheld terminal independently from the original equipment manufacturer

The aim of the work was to ensure the after-market supply of an industrial robot handheld terminal independently from the original equipment manufacturer. Therefore, a remanufacturing process was developed. Additionally, an upcycling of the unit was realized by fixing the malfunctions of the original handheld terminal. Initially the malfunctions of the original handheld terminal were analyzed. Based on the results of this analysis a requirement specification of a remanufactured handheld terminal was developed. The necessary remanufacturing process consists out of six steps. Following this the original handheld terminal was dismantled and all components were classified. The wearing and defective components had to be reproduced. For this purpose, a redesign was used. For every reproduced part the most economic manufacturing process was chosen. The generated results were used to manufacture a prototype of the upcycled handheld terminal. Also the supply chain for the remanufactured and upcycled handheld terminal was elaborated