Environmental Benefits of a Green Clean Design

“Clean Design” can help companies deal with ever-stricter environmental controls and the prospect of meeting producer responsibility legislation and product take-back obligations driven by European directives (WEEE, RoHS & EuP). This legislation will require companies to look closely at the environmental impacts of their products and to take action.

“Clean Design” is about asking smart questions early. Can we make it lighter? What will happen at the end of its life? Can it run on less power? Can we build it with fewer parts? Use less packaging? Design out the need for hazardous materials? Design it to be upgraded rather than replaced? Design in ease of maintenance?

Good solutions to any of these questions make a cleaner product. Many of them also make it easier to build or cheaper. Ultimately, a business will benefit from clean design, and will be able to respond quickly to real pressure from consumers and suppliers, rising taxes on waste and increased raw material costs.

Borer Data Systems consistently strive to innovate within the market sector in which we operate, and have achieved many firsts. The Clean Design Objectives we have set ourselves together with the choice of technologies we employ, may be new to the Security Access Control / Data Collection market place but are in everyday use in the process control, automotive and telecommunications industries.

In our system and products designs we have consistently worked to identify and comply with current ISO standards as well as integrate the best of mainstream technologies such as MiFare Smart Cards, TCP/IP and Controller Area Network.

Achieving reduction in the cost of ownership in a products life cycle has been a major driving force in the design and the development of our current product line. Our design imperatives, which are in line with the coming EU EuP directive 2005/32/EC, are to reduce: - 

• The quantity of raw materials by mass and consequently the energy required in the manufacture of our products.
• The amount of packaging to ship the product and the elimination of wall mounted enclosures to accommodate products when installed on customer’s sites.
• The amount and complexity of the infrastructure (data and power cables, mains outlets, batteries and consequently enclosure to house the equipment) and amount of time required to deploy / install the product
• The amount of energy consumed by the product in its everyday operation The number of post installation service calls (petrol miles) required to service and repair the product/system.
• The mass of the product to dispose of at the end of its life cycle.

In order to achieve the above objectives Borer has aimed for high levels of product integration by reducing the number of devices and size of the devices deployed. Borer’s product designers and development engineers have drawn upon leading edge technologies from both the automotive and communications industries (the largest single users of electronic components).

Consequently we have been able to reduce product mass (the quantity of raw materials used in the manufacture and deployment of products) and reduce energy consumption in line with the requirements and in advance of the introduction of the EuP directive.

As a consequence of having designed systems and equipment that requires fewer components and are considerably smaller and power frugal than competitive offerings, Borer are able to take advantage of new technologies such as “Power Over Ethernet” (PoE), to deliver power to a network of devices over CAT5 cable.

This is unachievable with most competitive systems as their products power demands preclude these options. By designing equipment with low power demands, Borer can provide systems that deliver power on CAT5e data cables from a single central monitored power supply.

This eliminates localised power supplies with associated enclosures, transformers, batteries and controllers, AC power spurs and heavy-duty mains cable. The result is systems that are not only easier to install and maintain but which draw less energy and thereby eliminating local controller boxes, power outlets and batteries (note current WEEE directive 2002/96/EC and the proposed EU battery directive will greatly increase costs associated with the disposal of used batteries).

New developments undertaken by Borer are taking advantage of improved power management technology using Power over Ethernet (PoE) design features and components.

This will allow Borer to develop systems with predictive fault diagnostics that can monitor a device for communication, power consumption and temperature anomalies thereby improving fault diagnoses and allowing the system and/or user to reset devices over the network thereby reducing the number of service engineer site visits with associated travelling costs (fuel miles).

Controller Area Network (CAN) is a widely applied technology originally devised for the automotive industry to reduce the number and size of cable looms installed in cars and trucks, thereby reducing the overall weight of a vehicle providing better fuel economy and performance.  Philips one of the producers of CAN node transceivers used in CAN communications recently announced that it had produced it’s billionth transceiver, which illustrates CAN’s wide acceptance and its inclusion into all manner of applications including vehicles, elevators, process systems, building automation as well as all manner of plant and machinery.

John Horn, Borer’s customer account manager, identified that cost savings of 30% could be made by installing systems manufactured by Borer as a result of the application of “clean design” principles when compared to the installation of a comparable system using legacy architecture.

Power over Ethernet (PoE) is a revolutionary technology that extends the already ultra-broad functionality of Ethernet by supplying reliable DC power over the same Category 5/5e twisted-pair cable that currently carries Ethernet data. PoE, modelled after the technology used by the telecommunications industry to supply reliable power to telephones, enables lifeline quality power for IP telephones (VoIP) as well as many other low power Ethernet network devices like wireless access points (WAP) and security cameras.

For further information on any our products or an info pack, please use the Contact Form or call on 0845 155 9623