Circularity Impact on Automotive Assembly - What Do We Know?

Assembly is crucial in the automotive industry, and regulations aimed to increase circularity impact the production systems. From this perspective different strategies are emerging related to sustainability and to the End-of-life Vehicles directive, perspectives often captured by “R-words” like Reuse, Recycle, Rethink etc. This paper is based on a literature search inspired by different R-words related to circularity and assembly in the automotive industry in combination with industrial workshops on the same theme. The results explore what challenges to manage during the ongoing green transition in the context of assembly in automotive. Recover, Repair, Reuse and Recycle are the most common terms found in the literature. Furthermore, Remanufacturing stands out as of particular interest to the automotive industry. However, based on the industrial workshops, Rethink as a collective word is an important perspective as well. The conclusions indicate that digitalization can be an enabler but also that there is a need for developing a common understanding about definitions and utilization of engineering tools supporting circularity.