Επίδραση της διαδικασίας βελτίωσης της περιβαλλοντικής συμπεριφοράς άχρηστου ηλεκτρικού και ηλεκτρονικού εξοπλισμού στα βασικά χαρακτη...

Abstract

The research seeks to exploit data from the design and the End of Life (EOL) stage that aid in formulating optimal EOL Treatment Strategies (EOL_TS) for a wide range of electrical and electronic products. The results of these EOL strategies applications and the initial data from the design stage are analyzed afterwards to identify improvements in the product design stage that would improve the environmental behavior after the end of the product useful life. The cost of this process is not taken under consideration. The products examined are electric and electronic products as defined in the 2002/96/EU Directive. First the methodology determines which possible EOL_TS can be applied based on the qualitative and quantitative available data and the system restrictions. Second the choice of the optimal EOL treatment strategy takes place according to the products‟ technical characteristics. Afterwards, the data of the selected EOL treatment strategy application are analyzed and conclusions are exported. The results from this procedure are related with the product design phase characteristics which can influence the product behavior concerning the environment and certain proposals for the design stage are written down. Additionally, two more problems that are examined in the frame of the mail problem concern: The determination of the required process, steps and degree of product disassembly. Evaluation of the EOL treatment strategy effectiveness. The proposed method that was developed to handle all these issues was based on lean thinking principles. Lean thinking is a method that constitutes of five stages namely, specify value, identify the value stream, make the value flow, let the customer pull the process and pursue perfection. Lean thinking has been successfully applied in manufacturing and operations‟ optimization problems. In this thesis lean thinking was chosen as the best appropriate method because the main issue was to handle a complicated situation with many parameters and unpredicted factors and lean thinking is based in the principle of simplifying difficult problems, analyze them thoroughly and exclude from further analysis all data that does not add any value in the solving procedure. The method proposed consists of five stages that are the following: Isolate the necessary data to be searched for the examined problem. Choose the best end-of-life treatment strategy that minimizes the negative effects on the environment. Apply and evaluate the results of the end-of-life treatment strategy performed. Collect from the design stage all possible product characteristics that could affect the product end-of-life behavior and can be improved. Combine the product design characteristics from the previous stage with the results of product end-of-life environmental behavior and propose certain actions in the design stage to improve in a greater extent this behavior. After the method presentation a small application is presented concerning the end-of-life behavior of an oil distribution transformer. The results showed that it is possible to connect design and EOL stage and the environment can have benefits from this connection.