Decision-support system for automotive recycling: Disassembling components before shredding?

In response to the challenges posed by the waste resulting from the increasing number of end-of-life vehicles (ELVs), this publication presents a decision-support system that evaluates automotive components at the end of their life: should they be disassembled before recycling or shredded directly? First, a methodology for developing the decision-support system based on literature and expert input is described. The study further defines eight critical factors that influence recycling decisions: material value, impurity relevance rate, design for disassembly rate, disassembly cost, logistics cost, process emissions, company's concern, and availability of end-of-life channels. These factors are then weighted according to their importance using the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) based on insights from expert interviews. The findings are applied exemplarily on a use case - an automotive door.