Cost evaluation in design for end-of-Life of automotive components

Jnl Remanufactur (2017) 7:97–111 DOI 10.1007/s13243-017-0035-5 RESEARCH Cost evaluation in design for end-of-Life of automotive components Catherine Anthony 1 & Wai M. Cheung 1 Received: 14 March 2017 / Accepted: 3 May 2017 / Published online: 10 July 2017 # Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2017 Abstract The European Union implemented the End-of-Life Vehicle directive to deal with an estimated 6 million end-of-life vehicles each year. Existing literature describe the processes to deal with the waste at end-of-life of different products but there is a lack of information on the costing of these options. These costs remain a concern to automotive manufacturers. This paper therefore reports the end-of-life costs of vehicle components and also demonstrates how these costs can be predicted at the design stage. The proposed approach should help to decide whether the automotive parts are viable for remanufacture, refurbishment, recycling, or disposal from an economic perspective. Two different automotive parts have been selected as case studies to validate the approach. Assumptions were made during the development of the technique and based on the results, the proposed approach could potentially provide vehicle manufacturers a method of estimating the cost of end-of-life recovery processes of vehicle components. Keywords End-of-life vehicle . Remanufacture . Refurbish . Recycle . Disposal . ELV. EoL costs Introduction This paper reports the investigation of automotive manufacturers and suppliers have to face by meeting the requirements of End-of-Life Vehicle (ELV) legislation [1, 2]. ELV is the term when a vehicle comes to the end of its useful life, whether this is naturally due to wear and tear or prematurely (such as an accident) [3]. Mass production of cars is accountable for more than a million ELVs each year in the UK [4]. Production of cars has grown steadily over the past Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s13243-017-0035-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Wai M. Cheung 1 Faculty of Engineering and Environment, Department of Mechanical and Construction Engineering, University of Northumbria, Upon Tyne, Newcastle NE1 8ST, UK 98 Jnl Remanufactur (2017) 7:97–111 30 years to the point where in 2016 around 95 million were produced worldwide [5]. It had become necessary for legislation to put in place to ensure that automotive producers make their vehicles more sustainable [4]. The European Directive 2000/53/EC “ELV Directive” seeks to make dismantling and recycling of ELVs more environmentally friendly [1]. It is also used to regulate recycling procedure and the ratio of how much material should be recycled [6]. With automotive components, it is generally believed that costs occur throughout production and the product’s life cycle. While manufacturers of course consider the costs of production, it is equally important that they consider the costs associated at End of Life (EoL), owing to ELV directive putting responsibility on the producer. Therefore, it is becoming increasingly important to consider the cost of disposal from the design stage to improve the efficiency in EoL. Xu et al. [7]; Cheung and Pachisia [8] state that a factor in the accomplishment of production and delivery of function need is cost. To be more competitive, manufacturers will need to consider many factors whilst also reducing costs. Disregarding EoL costs would make it easier to meet requirements specified by legislation, as it is possible to recycle virtually 100% of an ELV. Economically this would be unreasonable, as it could be unprofitable to the Original Equipment manufacturers (OEMs). EoL costs consist of creating, operating, maintaining, replacing, and then disposing of a product. The costs required to meet the ELV legislation will help the OEM to decide if a product is viable. The components of the ELV’s are usually recycled, reused, remanufactured, disposed or a combination of these attributes. Each of these methods has a cost associated with them, therefore these costs will need to be factored into new vehicles as the manufactures are required to be directly responsible for the environmental impacts of their products. Manufacturers have to take a more ethical approach to ensure components have been designed with the ability to be reused, recycled, recovered, and remanufactured. As part of this process it is essential to ensure that all vehicles can be easily de-polluted. The ELV legislation also requires that at the design stage, preventive measures are in place to reduce the use of hazardous substances to facilitate recycling [2]. Car manufacturers are under increasing pressure to accept responsibility for the complete life cycle of the vehicles they produced due to the implementation of government legislation. This requires a set of targets to be met for recycling, re-use and recovery. To confront with these targets, manufacturers have to prepare for EoL scenarios by considering them at the design stage. EoL is an important factor to be considered from the design stage as environmental impacts can be locked-in at this early stage. Therefore, this paper aims to demonstrate an approach to automotive manufacturers to estimate the end of life cost of a vehicle’s components. Two automotive parts are used to validate the approach and the method could allow OEM to select the most cost effective way of dealing with ELV. The remainder of this paper is organised as follows: “Literature review” section describes the background literature; “The proposed end-of-life cost prediction method for ELV” section presents the proposed method; “Case studies” section discusses the relevant case studies and finally the conclusion and future work are presented in “Conclusion and further work” section. Literature review The finding of the industrial survey by Cheung et al. [9] identified that about half of the cost for the life cycle of a product is usually associated with the manufacturing and in-service stages. They concluded that the EoL cost of a product is the least concerned to OEMs. Jnl Remanufactur (2017) 7:97–111 99 However, according to EU’s legislations [10] the consideration of end-of-life of a product is becoming very critical for OEMs in order to meet the target of reducing the amount of waste. Legislation for waste disposal was introduced due to an increased environmental awareness and the ever-decreasing lack of landfill space [1]. Anderson et al. [11] predict that growth of ELVs from 2005 to 2030 will have a significant increase of nearly 50%. Vermeulen et al. [12] describe how most developed countries have introduced legislation to make re-use, recovery, and recycling mandatory and that member states must establish a collection system for ELV’s. They state that the EU Directive aims to prevent vehicle waste by reducing hazardous substances, designing with disassembly, re-use and (...truncated)