DIMOP project seeks to create a software platform for product designers

In partnership with the German plastics center SKZ and two partners from the Bavarian plastics industry, the chair of business administration and business information systems at Julius-Maximilians-Universität (JMU) Würzburg in Bavaria, Germany, has been working toward the goal of making more plastics recyclable since July. The DIMOP project is funded by the Bavarian State Ministry for the Environment and Consumer Protection and is scheduled to run for three years.

The partners aim to increase the share of recyclable plastics by reducing the number of material components. "We focus on the product design stage because the recyclability aspect has largely been neglected by designers so far," says Jan Werner from the SKZ, a member of the Zuse society of independent research institutes. "Designers and recyclers live in two completely different worlds; there is no exchange of information."

The project plans to bring together these two worlds by creating a software platform that provides information on the recyclability of different plastics and material combinations. This will enable designers to weigh criteria such as functionality, resource efficiency and recyclability against each other and choose better materials based on this, the project partners say.

A JMU team led by Norman Pytel and Professor Axel Winkelmann is in charge of creating this platform.

"We want to provide digital tools for product developers to help them make better material choices - always with the aim of increasing the recyclability of plastic products," says doctorate student Pytel.

The DIMOP project deals with digital multicriteria material selection to optimize the recyclability of plastic materials. It is funded by the Bavarian government within the scope of ForCYCLE II, a collaborative project for more resource efficiency in the Bavarian economy.