Lean Thinking Process in the Determination of Design Suggestions to Optimize Treatment of WEEE

Authors: Anastasia Katsamaki, Nikolaos Bilalis, Vassilis Dedoussis

Abstract:

This work proposes a set of actions to assist redesign procedure in existing products of Electric and Electronic Equipment (EEE). The aim is to improve their environmental behavior after their withdrawal in the End-of-Life (EOL) phase. In the beginning data collection takes place. Then follows selection and implementation of the optimal EOL Treatment Strategy (EOL_TS) and its results- evaluation concerning the environment. In parallel, product design characteristics that can be altered are selected based on their significance for the environment in the EOL stage. All results from the previous stages are combined and possible redesign actions are formulated for further examination and afterwards configuration in the design stage. The applied method to perform these tasks is Lean Thinking (LT). At the end, results concerning the application of the proposed method on a distribution transformer are presented.

Keywords: End-of-life treatment, Lean thinking, WEEE

Digital Object Identifier (DOI): doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1085177

References:

[1] B. R. Babu, A. K. Parande, and C. A. Basha, "Electrical and electronic waste: A global environmental problem," Waste Management and Research, vol. 25, pp. 307-318, 2007.
[2] B. Haque, and M. J. Moore, "Applying lean thinking to new product introduction," Journal of Engineering Design, vol. 15(1), pp. 1-31, 2004.
[3] R. Hischier, P. Wager, and J. Gauglhofer, "Does WEEE recycling make sense from an environmental perspective? The environmental impacts of the Swiss take-back and recycling systems for waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE)," Environmental Impact Assessment Review, vol. 25, pp. 525-539, 2005.
[4] A. Katsamaki, and N. Bilalis, "Redesign propositions for electrical and electronic equipment for the optimization of their end-of-life treatment concerning the environment," in 5th International Conference on Advances in Mechanical Engineering and Mechanics, Tunisia, 2010.
[5] M. J. Kwak, Y. S. Hong, and N. W. Cho, "Eco-architecture analysis for end-of-life decision making," International Journal of Production Research, vol. 47, pp. 6233-6259, 2009.
[6] E. D. Williams, and Y. Sasaki, "Energy analysis of end-of-life options for personal computers: resell, upgrade, recycle," in 2003 Int. Symp. IEEE Electronics and the Environment, pp. 187-192.
[7] W. Wolfgang, K. L. Mo, J. I. Tae, and H. J. Hee, "Ecodesign in twelve steps - providing systematic guidance for considering environmental aspects and stakeholder requirements in product design and development," in 2005 Int. Conf. on Engineering Design, ICED 05.
[8] J. P. Womack, and D. T. Jones, Lean Thinking, The Free Press, 2003.