Targeted Application

Figure: Product fields, where labeling may have sense and benefit

Low level marking is meant for the end-products and all PWBs inside. On the other side, the high level marking is meant only for the use where high-level information is required. This means that the high additional costs through the labels can be paid back from the benefits through the usage of the labels. Therefore, only products with a high value and a potential for a long life are taken into account.

One the other hand, low-volume high-value products like medical systems and big manufacturing systems are in the producers accountability for the whole life cycle due to the legislative regulation. In most of these cases the medical systems are provided with operating hours counters, with operating journals and remote controlling and service devices. Thus, each service will be recorded in the service journals or even in the databases from the producer. Depending from the reliability and the life-time prognosis all needed data will be collected, and investigated for evaluating the collected data for service and EOL treatments.

A criterion for defining the targeted application is that the ownership of the product and the decision about the services moves from the producers to a private person or enterprise. Another criterion may be that the products are long living. In this case, the producer will not be able to provide services like in the warranty time either because of the absence of components, either because services will be provided on a broader market with non-contracted offerers. Following the above figure these are:

• TV sets and High End multimedia equipment

• Automotive

• Measuring equipment

• Control devices

With built-in Lifecycle Information Systems it should be possible to derive additional benefit. E.g. in the ELIMA project different scenarios are testes. In EFSOT project at first the possible impact of an Information system is discussed and an example of an LIS with a web-based database for material composition data is given.


AUTHOR: Irina Stobbe, TU Berlin, Germany (11/2004)

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