Hitachi Develops Product Design Support System that Considers Recycling Costs

Hitachi, Ltd. and a German research institute named IZM (Fraunhofer Institute for Reliability and Microintegration) have jointly developed a support system for environment-friendly product designing for the global market, they announced on November 9, 2006. The system assesses recycling costs and environmental burdens of a product at the design stage, incorporating European recycling techniques available mainly in Germany. The system will support product design work, featuring different recycling techniques in Europe.

The newly developed system makes it possible to estimate the environmental burden and recycling costs based on design data, such as product structure, materials used in parts, and chemical ingredients, and environmental data such as recycling techniques that are unique to each country and region.

In the system, assumptions about the product's ultimate method of recycling are made automatically for the destination market, and recycling costs and environmental burdens from the recycling are estimated in the designing process of a product. The system also offers guidelines for better product design, with minimum recycling costs and environmental impacts, more efficient product disposal and dismantling, in order to assist user companies in developing products that have lower manufacturing costs and lower environmental burdens.

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Posted: 2007/01/31 11:17:05 PM
Japanese version