LAYING THE FOUNDATIONS FOR A DFR TOOL FOR AUTO COMPONENTS

Environmentally innovative products are to be considered in the context of their life cycle, and within the framework of the legal-economic strategies that govern both product and the infrastructures that interact with it. The auto-industry has been particularly involved in this process and, in particular, EU directive 2000/53/EC, that restricts the use of some materials and stipulates minimum reuse and recovery rates for end-of-life vehicles, which motivates the use of dedicated design for recycling (DfR) tools. This paper assesses existing methodologies for economical optimisation of disassembly activities, and this allowed identifying the need for a new approach based on precedence relations between disassembly operations. This requires all the operators integrating the end of life vehicle processing chain to be considered, namely: dismantler, shredder and operator for shredder residue separation. The new methodology is under implementation in a software tool, which is illustrated in the text. The foundations for a DfR tool to be used in the auto industry are discussed and a methodology for disassembly activities optimisation that makes use of environmental and economical information is presented and illustrated in a case study