Simulation of a factory for the integrated manufacturing and remanufacturing of batteries

The current trend of increasing usage of batteries in electro-mobility and other applications can only be ecologically and economically sustainable if the batteries are not disposed at the end of their lifecycle but re-entered into the value chain. To benefit from the economies of scale, the re-introduction of the used batteries (or their components) into the linear manufacturing system would be favourable. This poses new, complex challenges to production planning and control, which can be tackled with the help of discrete event simulation (DES). For its application in an integrated factory which includes common linear production and circular processes, new modelling and control approaches are needed. These approaches are presented in this paper, applied to a planned production system in a research environment, and used for performing experiments, which give deeper insights into the requirements and economic viability of the integrated manufacturing and remanufacturing of batteries.