Utilisation of Embedded Information Devices to Support a sustainable Approach for the Use and Recovery of Products

Start - Finish:

2005-2010

Research Conducted by:

Prof. S. Rahimifard

Keywords:

Embedded information, intelligent products, wireless communication

Industrial collaborators:

Cambridge University (UK)
BIBA (Germany)
SAP (Germany)
Full list can be found at...

Aims & Objectives:

This research project aims to investigated the development of a range of passive and active Embedded Information Devices (EID) to support a sustainable approach for the use and recovery of products, where:

• Passive EID is defined as information device capable of storing a range of information related to design, production, and assembly activities to be used at EOL stage for selecting the most appropriate recovery, reuse or recycling options for a product.

• Active EID which has the capabilities outlined for passive EID, plus further abilities comprising two classes:-

- Smart EID defined as having the ability to monitor sensory data and update the product with repair and exchange records, improve product functionality, etc (called events )

- Intelligent EID, which extends the Smart EID concept to the ability of the product to predict lifetime and advise projected lifetime against usage profiles with a view to optimisation of product or process life. This clearly involves adaptation to changing scenarios and meaningful dialogue with human beings.

Brief Description

Mass industrialisation over the last century has had a negative impact on the natural environment, contributing towards serious problems such as global warming, ozone depletion, acid rain and more importantly serious depletion of natural resources. There is the concomitant problem of product disposal mainly in landfill and process discharges into the general environment. As a result, there is an increasing demand by customers, governments and the public from manufacturing industry to minimise any negative impact of their products and operations on the natural environment. This has resulted in significant research in the popular subject of Environmentally Conscious Manufacturing (ECM), which is concerned with developing methods, procedures and equipment for manufacturing applications to satisfy the increasing number of environmental standards and legislation.

One of the major research areas within ECM is Product Recovery (PR) which is the transformation of used and discarded products into useful condition through re-manufacture, re-use and recycling. Currently there are a large number of recycling and recovery applications within many different industrial sectors, which are often developed on ad hoc basis and mainly due to the hidden economic value within used products. It is argued that in order to make a desired environmental impact, the number of product recovery applications has to be significantly increased and ideally be implemented in every manufacturing application. One of the main obstacles reported by many researchers in achieving such large scale product recovery implementation is the lack of formal methods and appropriate supporting information systems to support the Extended Product Lifecycle.

The traditional approach to utilisation of information system based on the use of a database management system is often not appropriate due to wide geographical distribution of product use within the modern global market. One of the solutions being investigated in this context is the use of Embedded Information Devices (EID) to incorporate the required information within various products. This is apparent from the scope of research of an Intelligent Manufacturing Systems (IMS) project, entitled Product Lifecycle Management and Information Tracking Using Smart Embedded Systems (PROMISE) with academic and industrial collaborators from USA (4), Japan (7), Switzerland (3) and Europe (20).