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Abstract

In the context of the circular economy, products in their end-of-life phase should be either remanufactured or recycled. Both of these processes are crucial for sustainability and environmental conservation. However, manufacturers often do not support these processes enough by not sharing relevant data. This paper proposes use of a digital twin technology, which is capable to help optimizing the disassembly processes to reduce ecological impact and enhance sustainability. The proposed approach is demonstrated through a disassembly use-case of the product digital twin of an electric vehicle battery. By utilizing product digital twins, challenges associated with the disassembly of electric vehicle batteries can be solved flexibly and efficiently for various battery types. As a backbone for the product digital twin representation, the paper uses the paradigm of product-process-resource asset networks (PAN). Such networks enable to model relevant relationships across products, production resources, manufacturing processes, and specific production operations that have to be done in the manufacturing phase of a product. This paper introduces a Bi-Flow Product-Process-Resource Asset Network (Bi-PAN) representation, which extends the PAN paradigm to cover not only the manufacturing, but also the remanufacturing/recycling phase.