Cloud-based sustainable management of electrical and electronic equipment from production to end-of-life

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to describe a system and a database structure for the tracing of the waste of electric and electronic equipment (WEEE) using radio-frequency identification tags. Design/methodology/approach The problems related to the management of WEEE and the international directives have been presented and analyzed. The authors propose a traceability system to extend the tracing in the reverse logistics. Findings The proposed systems allow a more efficient management of the reuse, repair and recycle phase of the products and components, thus reducing the disposal of the electric and electronic equipment. There are many possible positive impacts of the system. The authors investigate, in particular, the impact of the single component tracing on the disposal cost reduction and on the reliability improvement using reused components.