A Smart Cloud-Based System for the WEEE Recovery/Recycling

Waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) is both valuable and harmful since it contains a large number of profitable and hazardous materials and elements at the same time. At component level, many parts of the discarded equipment are still functional and recoverable. Thus, it is necessary to develop a distributed and intelligent system to support WEEE component recovery and recycling. In recent years, the Cloud concept has gained increasing popularity since it provides a service-oriented architecture (SOA) that integrates various resources over the network. Cloud manufacturing systems are proposed worldwide to support operational manufacturing processes. In this research, Cloud manufacturing is further extended to the WEEE recovery and recycling context. The Cloud services are applied in WEEE recovery and recycling processes by tracking and management services. These services include all the stakeholders from the beginning to the end of life of the electric and electronic equipment. A Cloud-based WEEE recovery system is developed to provide modularized recovery services on the Cloud. A data management system is developed as well, which maintains the knowledge throughout the product lifecycle. A product tracking mechanism is also proposed with the help of the Quick Respond code method.