How can experiences from reuse activities influence the development of DFE-tools

Design for environment (DFE) is becoming more and more important, especially as there is a tremendous need to increase resource productivity because of the decreasing capacities of nonrenewable resources. One way to achieve this goal is to enhance a product's lifetime. Therefore the Austrian Society for Systems Engineering and Automation started to build a demonstration plant within the Strategic CARE initiative: "/spl Sigma/! 1592-Disassembly Factory". The idea of this project is to develop a flexible semiautomatic disassembling cell for extracting valuable and reusable components from printed circuit boards (PCB). Furthermore design impacts for a concept of a "disassembly-oriented product structure" is investigated. This paper illustrates how the experience of the Disassembly Factory will influence DFE methodologies in the future.