Challenges and Options for the Stepwise Transition from Assembly to Disassembly Plants - A Maturity Level-Based Framework

The transformation of the linear economy for vehicles into a circular economy is currently driven by various legislative processes, such as the new EU Directive on end-of-life vehicles (ELV) Directive. In a high-wage country such as Germany, the requirements for scaling disassembly plants are currently costly and difficult to implement economically due to the predominantly manual processes. The current state in automotive assembly processes is characterized by mainly linear material flows and high efforts in work content distribution and job sequencing to enhance the overall system performance. Contrarily, disassembly processes are connected to uncertainties in state and condition of various parts that would create turbulence in linear organized production structures. To highlight the required flexible system structures, the paper presents a framework for a stepwise transition of existing assembly facilities towards disassembly factories by means of a maturity level approach as well as an industrial case study that underpins technological challenges and the necessities of the derived maturity index for different design fields of production systems.