Two experts from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) give insights on solutions in the field of environmental technology and sustainability.

Agile production systems to deal with uncertain product specifications in remanufacturing

Remanufacturing can substantially reduce resource consumption in a circular economy but lacks on efficiency due to a high degree of manual work. Uncertainty of type, condition and quantity of used products impedes the breakthrough of process automation in industrial disassembly. Intelligent robots that can learn and anticipate situations like human operators, might lead to a paradigm change and will enable efficient production while still remaining flexible enough to react quickly to changing requirements. Production systems that combine such cognitive robots and their capabilities with human operators in a modular system are investigated within the AgiProbot project at the KIT in Karlsruhe (Germany). This talk is about the approach of the AgiProbot-factory, including a presentation of its inherent plug&rproduce framework called fluid automation.

Sustainable Production enabled by remanufacturing - Quality assurance of Products with uncertain Product Specifications

To operate sustainably, a circular economy must be established. Remanufacturing offers the opportunity to maintain high-level value added to the products by disassembling used products, refurbishing, and reassembling them into products with full functionality. Challenges arise, among others, due to the high variance of the conditions of the returning used products. This concerns signs of degradation (wear and tear, corrosion), but also defects that occur (broken parts). This high variance poses great challenges to quality assurance systems, as said defects have to be detected and assessed to evaluate the reusability of the declining used product. This talk is dedicated to highlighting the challenges and presenting approaches for quality assurance in remanufacturing.