Everyone is talking about environmental and climate protection today. At the same time, people's growing needs must be satisfied - and at an economically justifiable cost. One component is the processing and recycling of used products in order to save valuable primary raw materials.

Optimizing Pick & Pass Production Systems

While diverse literature exists on flow production systems in general, the packing of cooking boxes has not been considered so far. It is characterised by a high number of similar orders consisting of comparatively few components. For this framework, we investigate so-called Pick & Pass systems together with HelloFresh.

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Optimizing Data Collection and Validation

Insufficient data quality prevents its use by decision support systems (DSS) in many areas of the economy. This applies, for example, to data on priority relationships between tasks in production. Inaccurate data on unnecessary priority relations cannot be used, otherwise the recommendations of the DSS are not feasible (First the foundation must be poured, then the wall must be bricked). Unnecessary relations must therefore be fulfilled, which reduces the solution space of the initial problem and the business outcome. Experts can validate the data, but their time is limited.

In our research, we apply an optimisation lens to make the best use of an expert's available time budget. He dynamically receives queries on specific data entries and corrects or validates them.

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Scheduling Maintenance Activities

Maintenance is often time-consuming and costs time and resources, for example because machines have to be switched off and cleaned. To ensure that the machine does not fail unexpectedly, maintenance today is often carried out at fixed time intervals. We are investigating how the maintenance intervals can be increased without the probability of unexpected failures becoming too great.

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Remanufacturing

In recent years, questions of resource security and efficiency have become increasingly important in business and politics. Like many other EU countries, Germany is dependent on imports for important raw materials. For a long time this problem was discussed only with regard to classic raw materials and energy sources (metals, oil, gas, etc.), which are produced in large quantities worldwide. Now rare raw materials for information and communication technology products are currently increasingly the focus of public interest. In particular, a strong increase in demand for these raw materials is assumed due to the fact that these products typically have a service life of only a few years and that there is a widespread lack of suitable recycling systems.

A solution approach here is so-called remanufacturing in connection with closed-loop supply chains, which is already carried out to varying degrees on a large number of products. The spectrum ranges from capital goods such as military weapon systems to consumer goods such as ink cartridges, toner cartridges and smartphones. In the implementation of remanufacturing - which, in contrast to well-known recycling, does not only preserve the raw materials contained in a product but also a large part of the value added through reprocessing - the relationship between manufacturer, retailer and end customer is of particular importance.

In many cases, remanufacturing is only possible through the combination with services. One example is Pay-TV decoders, which are provided to the customer as part of a subscription and also have to be returned. On the one hand, the return of old products is guaranteed. On the other hand, customer acceptance is also significantly higher than with the purchase of products, since the focus here is not on owning the decoder but on "watching TV".

In the past, manufacturers mainly focused on the distribution and pricing of new products. But in the context of remanufacturing they are faced with numerous new questions. For example, return processes must be designed and service models must be examined. The manufacturer must also take into account the effects on the new product offered simultaneously; for example, on the one hand there is the threat of competition, but on the other hand there are also additional opportunities to segment the market.

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