Identification and promotion of effective and efficient product and material cycles via crowdsourcing

Abstract

To increase use productivity of products and materials, promising combinations of process steps in recycling and manufacturing shall be identified and promoted. Crowdsourcing offers the chance where every member of a community is able to contribute with particular knowledge and innovative ideas about recycling and manufacturing in a collaborative way. The most effective and efficient single or combined processes have to be identified and promoted in order to substitute less good processes. For comparison and evaluation, contributions are structured as value creation modules, clustering product, process, equipment, organization and human related information. This paper describes how manufacturing and recycling process steps are structured, combined and evaluated. The approach is applied on manufacturing of bicycles as a labor intensive and manufacturing of photovoltaic as a capital intensive example.