Proper consideration of a product's environmental impact during the product's design phase is of paramount importance for electronic manufactures. Improved products are not only necessary to avoid increased regulation and potential liability, but to maintain competitiveness in a marketplace of increasingly environmentally conscious consumers.

HOBI has a registered professional engineer on staff that consults with the industry on designing products for recycling and the handling of post consumption electronics waste. HOBI has a commitment to the furthering of electronics recycling technology. HOBI's engineering staff is actively involved in the ongoing research in the electronics recycling and design for disassembly field. Members of HOBI's staff regularly participate in industry conferences. HOBI also provides internal operations staff with extensive technical training.

    This is an excellent introduction for designers, managers and operations personnel. Introduction covers the issues pressing the electronics industries and the basic concept of Design for the Environment. General principles of Design for Disassembly are also covered.

    This workshop draws on HOBI's extensive experience in equipment demanufacturing to give practical Design for Disassembly concepts. The workshop begins with a basic Design for Disassembly introduction. The discussion proceeds with details and examples on key Design for Disassembly principles.

    HOBI can provide consulting on specific projects, including acting as a support member to a design team. This gives the design team full benefit of HOBI's extensive experience in equipment demanufacture. HOBI's chief consultant, Craig Boswell, is a registered professional engineer and has extensive design team experience.

    HOBI offers two brief white papers, one entitled a "Green Product Strategy" which provides an overview of a closed loop manufacturing/recycling system, and a second paper "Component Recovery and Reuse". The paper on component recovery and reuse outlines a strategy for implementing a recovery program for integrated circuits from defective or surplus circuit cards. HOBI also provides information on the types of materials liberated in the electronics recycling process and the economic life cycle cost benefits that can be obtained through Design for Disassembly.
HOBI has three pulbished papers available. The first is entitled "A Feedback Strategy for a Closed Loop End-of-Life Process," which provides information on disassembly data collection methodologies. An abstract of this paper is available here. This paper was presented at the Clean Electronics Products Technology Conference in Edinburgh, Scotland.
The second paper is entitled "The Economic Impact of Design for Disassembly on the Electronics Recycling Process." An abstract is available here.
The third paper, entitled "The Impact of Design for Recyclability on the Electronics Recycling Process," is available here. This paper was presented at the Portable by Design conference sponsored by Electronic Design magazine at the Santa Clara Convention Center.