Project Description
The project "EffizientNutzen" deals with the conception of a resource-efficient circular economy through extended product usage as well as optimized cascade usage and exploitation in the end-of-life of electr(on)ic products. Therefore, innovative and data-based business models are developed in order to fulfill the customer needs and to create incentives for the customers and the companies to keep the electr(on)ic products in the market for a longer time.
Within the scope of the project the AIP focuses on the development of decision support models for the network design and for the planning of the spare parts strategy. This particularly involves the design of reverse logistic processes and their integration into the spare parts strategy.
Responsible
- Sven Hemminghaus
- Christian Scheller
- Kerstin Schmidt
Project Partners
Cooperation Partners:
- Four industrial, service and consulting companies from the field of production and recycling of electr(on)ic products
Joint Partners:
- Technische Universität Braunschweig:
- Technische Universität Clausthal:
Initial Situation and Problem
The production of new electr(on)ic products in low-wage locations often leads to lower costs than the repairing or the refurbishing of the products in high-wage locations. Additionally, the customer needs are more and more affected by the innovations, developed in the industry, that enter the market at decreasing intervals. Nevertheless, there exists a demand for secondhand products and repairing solutions. However, the supply for such products and services is rather sparse and repairing or refurbishing the electr(on)ic products as a non-professional is hardly even possible due to the increasing complexity of the products.
This implicates that used products are disposed of faster and are replaced by new products, whereby the used products are energetically exploited at the most. Hence, the amount of electronic waste increases globally and leads to significant environmental impacts and losses of resources. The concept of a circular economy to be developed within the scope of the project is supposed to counteract these trends by keeping electr(on)ic products in the market for a longer time and exploit them optimally in the end-of-life.
Objective and Approach
The objective of the project is to create innovative and data-based business models in order to enable a circular economy with extended usage and purposeful exploitation of electr(on)ic products. Thereby, the general framework and potential barriers are determined and analyzed and digitalization strategies are considered.
The objective of the AIP is to develop applicable methods for the design of (closed-loop) supply chains in the context of a circular economy. Using methods from the field of operations research, networks for collective and return processes are created and evaluated with regard to economic target values. Furthermore, these networks are integrated into the planning of the spare parts strategy.