Project description
A circular business model to sustain repairs and remanufacturing
When a household appliance like a washing machine breaks down, the cost of repair is often too high and not worth the fuss. The right to repair, however, is important in the circular economy. In view of this, the EU-funded DiCiM project will develop digital solutions to boost new circular economy business models. It will aim to achieve efficiency and responsiveness in the value recovery activities – from inspection and disassembly to repairing, remanufacturing and recycling. The aim is to enable the reuse of products, parts and materials. Specifically, DiCiM will demonstrate integrated digital solutions for whitegoods (refrigerators, washing machines), electronics (printers) and automotive. A particular focus will be on increasing the recovery of spare parts.
Objective
The aim of the current project is to bring about the development of the full demonstrator of DiCiM, a set of integrated digital solutions that makes use of Internet of Things (IoT), Machine Learning (ML) based Artificial Intelligence (AI), Big Data, Image Processing and Augmented Reality (AR) to support different actors of the industrial value chain such as managers, engineers and operators in their decision making and to carry out value recovery activities for circular economy. The integrated digital solutions include an open access digital platform for lifecycle information management and support solutions for value recovery activities.
DiCiM project revolves around the value use and value recovery phases of the Circular Value Model (CVM) with the specific data, technology and the management needed to support its implementation. In particular, it focuses on integrated digital solutions to enabling condition monitoring during the use phase, optimizing the reverse logistics, and achieving efficiency and responsiveness in the value recovery activities (i.e. collection, inspection, sorting, disassembly, testing and repairing/refurbishing/remanufacturing/recycling) to enable reuse of products, parts and materials.
DiCiM project will demonstrate integrated digital solutions in four use cases in three industrial sectors that represent over two thirds of the European Economy. They include whitegoods (i.e. refrigerators, washing machines), electronics (i.e. printers) and automotive. With important gains such as increase in spare part recovery efficiency by 90% (which means 126 000 labour hours are saved for refrigerator demonstrator) and increase in spare part recovery rate by 20% (about 2920 tons net material saving for washing machines and 6000 tons for automotive).
DiCiM digital solutions will boost new circular economy business models based on value recovery activities to sustain and encourage remanufacturing throughout Europe.
Fields of science
- natural sciencescomputer and information sciencesdata sciencebig data
- engineering and technologyenvironmental engineeringwaste managementwaste treatment processesremanufacturing
- social scienceseconomics and businessbusiness and managementbusiness models
- social scienceseconomics and businesseconomicssustainable economy
- natural sciencescomputer and information sciencesartificial intelligencemachine learning
Keywords
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-RIA - HORIZON Research and Innovation ActionsCoordinator
601 77 Brno
Czechia