Integrated circuits towards reducing e-waste: Future design directions

Lehmann, Torsten; Hamilton, Tara Julia

doi:10.1109/icgcs.2010.5543018

Cited by 7 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…Along with improvements in readiness and availability, these investments also reduce the logistics footprint and costs associated with purchasing and carrying spare parts and overall service (Kim et al ., 2007; Devries, 2005; Gansler and Lucyshyn, 2006). Lehmann and Hamilton (2010) argued that growth in terms of system reliability is critical to increasing the lifetime of systems and reducing e-waste. Thus, PBC can facilitate the decrease of e-waste by incentivizing investment in reliability.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Decreasing e-waste through reliability enhancement encouraged by performance-based contracting

Uvet

Çelik

Cevikparmak

et al. 2022

IJQRM

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PurposeIn the last 20 years, e-waste has become a serious issue resulting from an overwhelming amount of electronics consumption. However, there has been limited research on how to decrease such waste in a structured manner. Toward study was to use a simulation methodology to investigate the dynamics of upfront investment in reliability enhancement promoted by performance-based contracting (PBC), based on the number of spare parts and duration of the contract.Design/methodology/approachThe present research first details the relevant mathematical equations and uses game theory to demonstrate the utility for supplier and buyer relationships. Next, the effects of reliability enhancement, spare partsPBC are analyzed using a BlockSim simulation model.FindingsThe results indicate strong relationships among system design cost, reliability, availability and service cost. The authors found that investment in reliability increases system availability while reducing total service costs. Furthermore, increasing the spare parts inventory was determined to have less influence on the readiness of highly reliable systems. The findings support the notion that PBC reduces e-waste by increasing system availability, incentivizing upfront investment in reliability growth.Research limitations/implicationsRecognition of these findings in the context of buyer–supplier relationships will help managers better understand the value of upfront reliability investment, reducing maintenance, repair and overhaul requirements, avoiding the need to plan for extra spare parts and minimizing volume and the resulting e-waste.Practical implicationsThis study also clarifies the uncertainty associated with upfront investment and provides potential incentives for suppliers.Originality/valueThe main contribution of this study is its use of PBC for e-waste reduction, highlighting the effects of upfront investment in reliability enhancement. The authors applied a game theory model to illustrate the relationship between incentives and upfront investment and demonstrate how increased levels of spare parts can be counterproductive to achieving readiness, reducing inventory and consequent e-waste.

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Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Decreasing e-waste through reliability enhancement encouraged by performance-based contracting

Uvet

Çelik

Cevikparmak

et al. 2022

IJQRM

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…This is likely to contribute to the already increasing number of abandoned IoT zombie devices due to poor life-cycle management [Soós et al, 2018], especially in outdoor environments with corrosion and varying temperature-humidity conditions. Shortened effective lifetime for consumer IoT edge devices can also arise due to hardware, software or psychological obsolescence [Lehmann and Hamilton, 2010]. Consequently, effective lifetime has to be differentiated from autonomy or expected lifetime.…”

Section: End-of-life Considerationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…According to [Forum, 2019, Forti et al, 2020, about 80% of WEEE are not documented nor collected for proper recycling. It acknowledges the fact that a wide majority ends up in developing countries where informal recycling and landfill occur, causing health and environmental concerns [Lehmann and Hamilton, 2010]. The lack of representative data about environmental impacts explains partially why the vast majority of LCA discard this phase of the life cycle.…”

Section: End-of-life Considerationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing the embodied carbon footprint of IoT edge devices with a bottom-up life-cycle approach

Pirson,

Bol

2021

Preprint

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In upcoming years, the number of Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices is expected to surge up to tens of billions of physical objects. However, while the IoT is often presented as a promising solution to tackle environmental challenges, the direct environmental impacts generated over the life cycle of the physical devices are usually overlooked. It is implicitly assumed that their environmental burden is negligible compared to the positive impacts they can generate. Yet, because IoT calls for a massive deployment of electronic devices in the environment, life-cycle assessment (LCA) is an essential tool to leverage in order to avoid further increasing the stress on our planet. Some general LCA methodologies for IoT already exist but quantitative results are still scarce. In this paper, we present a parametric framework based on hardware profiles to evaluate the cradle-to-gate carbon footprint of IoT edge devices. We exploit our framework in three ways. First, we apply it on four use cases to evaluate their respective production carbon footprint. Then, we show that the heterogeneity inherent to IoT edge devices must be considered as the production carbon footprint between simple and complex devices can vary by a factor of more than 150×. Finally, we estimate the absolute carbon footprint induced by the worldwide production of IoT edge devices through a macroscopic analysis over a 10-year period. Results range from 22 to 562 MtCO2-eq/year in 2027 depending on the deployment scenarios. However, the truncation error acknowledged for LCA bottom-up approaches usually lead to an undershoot of the environmental impacts. We compared the results of our use cases with the few reports available from Google and Apple, which suggest that our estimates could be revised upwards by a factor around 2× to compensate for the truncation error. Worst-case scenarios in 2027 would therefore reach more than 1000 MtCO2-eq/year. This truly stresses the necessity to consider environmental constraints when designing and deploying IoT edge devices.

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Reconfigurable Green Terminals: a Step Towards Sustainable Electronics

Bossuet

2012

Green Networking

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Integrated circuits towards reducing e-waste: Future design directions

Cited by 7 publications

References 21 publications

Decreasing e-waste through reliability enhancement encouraged by performance-based contracting

Decreasing e-waste through reliability enhancement encouraged by performance-based contracting

Assessing the embodied carbon footprint of IoT edge devices with a bottom-up life-cycle approach

Reconfigurable Green Terminals: a Step Towards Sustainable Electronics

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