Combined strategies for recycling product and process oriented benchmarking

As in any design activity there is the need to compare the performance of products with other products or predefined goals. This enables to develop strategies to outstrip products currently available on the market and to become best in class. The benchmark method is the suitable approach for this task. The objective for a recycling oriented development is to reach a high recycling ratio in the sense of a closed loop economy with the highest possible economic efficiency. For this reason the used method to benchmark is a synthesis of process and product assessment. On the process side the recycling ratio and the total end-of-life cost are determined as main results. On the product side a multi-criteria based, so called recycling potential, is used to describe the general recycling ability of a product. A cost-reduced recycling ratio and the recycling potential are used as key factors for a product portfolio analysis. Using the portfolio the best product can be identified and strategies can derived based on the portfolio categories defined.