PLM Industry Vision, Case Study 6: Plastics Recycling
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2PLM NewsletterJohn Stark Associates June 21, 2010 - Vol13 #6 |
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Welcome to the 2PLM e-zine This issue includes :
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PLM Industry Vision |
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It is well understood that every PLM implementation should define a PLM Vision. It is a fundamental part of project management. It therefore seems reasonable to ask the PLM industry to do the same. If the PLM industry itself is ever to become mature and deliver everything that users are currently looking for, what will the picture look like in 10 years' time? It seems likely that the supply side will look very similar to how it does now, with a wide range of vendors and service providers driving PLM capability forward as they race to compete with each other. However, in 2020, that PLM capability will be able to be measured against a framework of industry-wide PLM knowledge, metrics and standards, so that user companies of all sizes can plan and implement PLM in a quantified way. The overwhelming difference with today's scenario is the lack of doubt. By 2020, PLM has been publicised and developed as a professional activity so that everyone in business, in any capacity and in any industrialised country, is familiar with it. PLM teams work in an atmosphere of understanding and acceptance. Project justifications are based on an internationally-agreed PLM Benefits Reference Model, which allows ROI to be based on precise metrics generated from real implementation successes over the past 10 years. Implementations are easily planned using PLM Maturity Model roadmaps and are carried out according to formal PLM Best Practice standards distilled from experienced user companies. This saves the effort that is wasted today on re-invention and "wondering how other people do it" and means that successful implementation has become completely predictable. Individual implementations are fully mature. Whatever the size of the company, the PLM director can say: "All of the elements of PLM are in place across the entire enterprise. The whole enterprise manages its products actively and seamlessly from the executive board down to the most detailed operational level, with commercial integration throughout the product chain with our customers and suppliers. Product-related data across the whole lifecycle is created once and presented to the right people in the right format and detail at the right time. People, processes and technology are integrated within the PLM framework, and are supported by a comprehensive and fully-integrated IT infrastructure. Everyone within our 40 sites in 18 countries understands their PLM role and is working the same way." |
More importantly, implementations are fully mature in this way across all of the industrialised world. No matter if you are in the USA, Europe, or one of the Asian countries, the adoption of PLM is just as thorough and complete. The southern hemisphere has been brought into the fold, so, wherever you trade, your company will find the same opportunities for skilled partnership. This has brought about some re-balancing of low-cost economies, but it has also transformed the world's productivity (and the size of the PLM marketplace). This is a PLM scenario of 10 years' time, and as with any Vision it will only be realised if everyone works towards it - in this case, by applying a form of collaboration and industry focus that is currently missing. PLM needs a proactive industry body, incorporating leading users and vendors, that is truly international. This body will develop new PLM standards, but will also liaise with major companies and existing standards organisations to incorporate their best elements. The body will take the PLM message to national industry bodies and media sources around the world to pass success stories from one country to another. It will coordinate the safe exchange of best practice from leading implementations, thus providing the structure and metrics for the Best Practice and Maturity reference models. Perhaps most of all, it will bring together leading PLM companies in a cooperative structure that can become a Steering Group for the industry. It is the aim of the PLMIG to provide the vehicle for this.
Roger Tempest is co-founder of the PLMIG. You can request more information or find out how to participate via standards@plmig.com |
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| CL2M Case Study 6 : EOL Plastic Materials Recycling by David Potter |
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This case study is based on one of the 10 commercial applications developed during the EU PROMISE Project. It briefly describes how common PROMISE technologies were applied in order to increase the availability of more accurate life-cycle data about plastic materials for recycling and to highly automate decision making and process flow control within a recycling facility.
European and international directives are increasingly focusing on reduction of used materials going to landfill or incineration. They require a significant improvement not only in the quantity of material available for recycling but also a more effective utilisation of materials in remanufactured goods with a higher value. Many plastic materials potentially have a high residual value providing that they have not been contaminated by other materials during their life, and plastic articles that can be clearly identified and sorted from articles of different compounds or utilisation history are able to be re-used in new products with a higher value.
The application charts the receipt of plastic materials for recycling through identification and sorting processes, storage in both normal storage areas and, if appropriate, areas monitored for hazardous conditions in the material. When materials are re-processed, the application records the end-of-life events for all materials consumed in the production process, and the beginning of life events for the new material thus created. In this way, the information loop regarding specific composition of new product batches can be managed and closed. After re-processing the products are tracked again, and monitored if necessary, in storage until final despatch in response to a customer order.
Product Embedded Information Devices (PEIDs) are applied to individual plastic objects and containers of materials using appropriate identification technologies (barcode, RFID devices) according to the value of the objects concerned. These are used to precisely identify their composition at the time of reception in the recycling facility. In the case of larger and higher value components, for example vehicle bumpers, data such as characteristics, material, vendor, production batch and date, component history and operating conditions can be stored.
Data about the plastic materials is collected from the PEIDs and stored in the PROMISE PDKM (Product Data Knowledge Management) Server. This is used in combination with information recorded by indoor and outdoor navigation systems fitted to forklift trucks which identify and record the exact position in storage of the objects and containers.
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The tracking and tracing of materials throughout each stage of the recycling process in this way ensures complete reliability in identification and use of the correct materials. The PROMISE Decision Support System (DSS) performs two major functions in this application:
1. Makes decisions about how the materials will be used in the recycling process, from sorting, through storage, re-processing and eventually despatch as a new product.
2. Automates the human decision making which is currently necessary to compensate for the lack of integration between the ERP, PPS and WMS systems in a typical plastics recycling company.
The use of a PROMISE-compliant PEID together with appropriate sensors allows the system to monitor the condition of potentially hazardous materials while they are in storage. Some materials become hot after re-processing and are susceptible to combustion for a time. Being able to actively monitor the material whilst in storage greatly reduces the risk of fire.
The application demonstrates how the tracking and tracing of products identified for recycling can be enhanced using the PROMISE PEID technology and PDKM system in combination with indoor and outdoor navigation systems. It improves the information flow throughout the EOL phase of used plastic materials (e.g. car bumpers) and the BOL phase of the resulting recycled material (e.g. granular plastic), bridging the information gaps present in the state-of-the-art and closing the information loop. It optimises processes within these phases by providing real-time product and context information to a number of back-end systems, and by integrating DSS into the existing backend in order to handle these processes more effectively and efficiently.
Registered users who are logged in to cl2m.com will be able to access the full public text of this PROMISE demonstrator case study by following this link: Case Study 6: EOL Plastic Materials Recycling. There is no charge for registration.
In the next issue of the 2PLM newsletter, I will present the seventh in this series of case studies, dealing with the application of PROMISE technologies to support beginning-of-life Design for X (DfX) principles for railway locomotives.
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