3/10/2010
It wasn’t long ago that one would never think about throwing away a used phone, or a computer, or a television. According to Harrison M. Kim, an assistant professor in the Department of Industrial and Enterprise Systems Engineering (IESE), more than 100 million cell phones are retired each year. Less than 5% recovered, which means that most end up in a landfill.
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It wasn’t long ago that one would never think about throwing away a used phone, or a computer, or a television. According to Harrison M. Kim, an assistant professor in the Department of Industrial and Enterprise Systems Engineering (IESE), more than 100 million cell phones are retired each year. Less than 5% recovered, which means that most end up in a landfill.
“People think that returning it to Best Buy is enough,” Kim explained. “But if a product’s components are not designed to be replaced or reused, it is unlikely that it can be recycled efficiently.” To make a product easy to recover, manufacturing companies first need to understand the links between product design and recovery profit and be able to evaluate which design is better than others and why.
Product recovery has become a field of rapidly growing interest for product manufacturers as a promising solution for product stewardship as well as for economic viability. Because product recovery is highly dependent upon the way a product is designed, it should be considered in the design stage to optimize its recovery potential.
“As environmental regulations urge stronger stewardship for product retirement, recovering used products has become a field of rapidly growing interest for product manufacturers,” Kim added. “Recovery options—including reuse, repair, refurbishment, and recycling—enable companies to comply with legislation while also gaining some economic advantage. At comparatively little cost, companies can utilize many of the resources remaining in used products.
“As a result, more companies have been choosing product recovery instead of disposal as their primary retirement strategy,” Kim said. “Accordingly, engineering methods for maximizing recovery profit have come into increasing demand from industry.”
In several recent studies supported by the National Science Foundation, Kim and IESE colleague, Deborah Thurston, have developed a framework for analyzing how design differences affect product recovery and what architectural characteristics are desirable from the end-of-life perspective.
“As an illustration, we did a comparative study of cell phones types. Three cell phone handset designs that share the same design concept but have different architectural characteristics. Ultimately, the optimal product design is the one that offers the greater recovery profit.”
The reprocessing options considered in his research include reuse, refurbishment, and recycling. A reused item can be used for its original purpose without repair. A refurbished item maintains its identity and structure and is repaired or remanufactured as a like-new product. This usually includes disassembly, overhaul, and replacement are part of refurbishing a product.
“Component recovery is another option that can be more worthwhile than product recovery, especially when parts or modules account for most of the residual value.” In the case of a cell phone, the case may be worn or outdated, and perhaps the keyboard is too worn for reuse. However, the LCD screen may be perfectly useable in a rebuilt product.
This same concept can be applied to most manufactured items, according to Kim.
“Caterpillar rebuilds diesel engines and certain automotive parts such as starters, transmissions, and oil pumps are routinely refurbished and reused.”
A product can be recovered not only in the form of a product but also of a module, a component, or a material. Multiple operations may be required to transform a unit into a desirable form, and different recovery plants can be required to accommodate necessary operations. After all reprocessing is complete, recovered units are sold to demand sites, such as manufacturing plants and used-product markets.
The parts that cannot be reused can often be recycled to recover raw materials. Incineration of parts that are not reusable produces heat and electricity. When a company does not carry out any recycling on its own, dedicated recyclers are the demand sites for these materials.
To determine the economic viability of the different options, Kim created a sophisticated mathematical matrix that takes into account numerous variables including the product design and production costs as well as the costs of the recovery network for collection, transportation, disassembly, repurposing of component parts, and recycling or disposal of unusable elements.
“We also looked at the volume of units involved to develop an optimization model for recovery profit evaluation.” Kim added. “The results show that the framework can highlight preferred design alternatives and their design implications for the economic viability of end-of-life recovery.”
As a result of several related research initiatives, Kim believes transformative potential of this model for decision-makers who are working to balance economic advantage and environmental stewardship with compliance to regulations.
“The outcome of this research will ensure that sustainable product portfolio design will be realized at a much faster pace with economic justification, as well as environmental stewardship with regulatory compliance,” Kim said. “It will also provide a new business model whereby a company is compelled to close the loop of product design and recovery by making recovery a part of the business model, due to its potential profitability, rather than outsourcing or ignoring it.”
Kim leads the Enterprise Systems Optimization Lab at Illinois. Prior to joining the IESE faculty in 2005, he held positions in research and consulting with the U.S. Army Automotive Research Center, Northwestern University, and a business-IT consulting company.
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Contact: Harrison Kim, Department of Industrial and Enterprise Systems Engineering, 217/265-9437.
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