STANDARDIZATION AND PROCESS THINKING DRIVES CAR DISASSEMBLY FORWARD

There is a low profit margin in the process steps of car disassembly, which calls for efficient and effective work. The disassemblers suffer from high uncertainty in process planning due to different cars (brands and condition) being brought in to the workshops. Therefore the workshops have been set up to ensure high flexibility, with most workstations being able to handle most types of cars. Though it is starting to emerge, process thinking has not prevailed and processes within disassembly are not on par with the effectiveness at the car manufacturers’ sites. The staff learn much of the tasks performed by heart from other disassemblers; if anything is forgotten, subtasks will have to be conducted afterwards, causing inefficiency. The aforementioned aspects combined result in time-consuming operations; therefore opportunities to disassemble further spare parts are lost, because of the time and cost it takes. Hence, there is a potential to increase effectiveness both in disassembly operations and environmental load placed by cars. According to Swedish law, 95% of a car should be recycled. Currently separation of materials is low and the mixed material fractions lead to low-quality use of recycled material. At several Swedish disassembly plants, operations were assessed through time measurements and observations. The operations and their subtasks were mapped as value adding or non-value adding activities, and in combination with statistics on the operations and incoming cars, improvement areas were identified. In this study the disassemblers were not following a standard for performing operations. Part of this was due to insufficient instructions and guidelines to follow. A first suggestion is to improve the cognitive automation by providing mobile instructions to disassemblers for standard tasks. Enabling process thinking and standard tasks to be performed with higher efficiency and effectiveness also allows for additional parts being disassembled thanks to decreased cost for the standard parts. Discrete event simulation was used to study the effects of the suggested solutions. The cost for disassembly can be decreased through standardization of processes. Thereafter, new market opportunities can be created with increased reuse of parts, reduced scrap of materials and thus, reduced environmental stress caused by cars.