Challenge Owner(s)	ABB
Industry Types(s)	Circular Economy & Sustainability

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How might we develop innovative solutions to track the sustainability footprint of ABB's motors, and leverage this data to enhance their internal design process for developing new motors that prioritise sustainability factors?

Providing motor solutions is an important part of ABB’s core business. Increasingly, sustainability is an important consideration for ABB’s customers when making purchasing decisions and determining which motor to purchase. More specifically, customers ask about sustainability parameters including CO2 footprint, energy efficiency, the raw materials utilised in the motor.

What We Are Looking For

Technical Requirements:

• The ability to track the following key parameters: CO2 footprint, energy productivity / savings, recycle content, lifetime of the product
• We are looking for an accuracy that is as high as possible but understand that this is dependent on the data quality.
• Dashboards where key parameters are shown and comparisons between products can be done
• Potential integrations with foundational LLM’s to have a text-based interface would be a nice to have
• Eventually it would be interesting to be able to look at traceability and connect the solution to the digital passport for products that is coming up in the EU
  
  

Performance Requirements:

The business performance of solutions will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. However, generally speaking we would be looking for the following business benefits:

• Increase of customer retention
• Increase of sales volume
• Improve of our internal product design process

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Challenge Owner(s)	Electrolux
Industry Types(s)	Circular Economy & Sustainability

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How might we effectively reduce bubble formation during the door-foaming process in Electrolux's freezers and fridges to enhance product quality?

Freezers and fridges are an important part of Electrolux’s worldwide business.

As part of our standard process, we currently use a polymer foam (polyurethane) as insulation between the plastic and the metal parts of the doors. It is applied as a “liquid” on the plastic surface with an open mould and then the mould closes to allow for the chemical reaction to take place. In certain cases, since there is air inside the cavity of the door, an “air bubble” remains trapped in what we call “door bin support” – and the end result is that the support is not completely filled.

Electrolux is therefore looking for solutions to reduce potential air bubble formation during our door foaming process.

Currently, we experience bubble formation in some cases when foaming our doors. We believe that we can increase our product’s reliability and performance by reducing air bubble formation.

What We Are Looking For

Technical Requirements:

1. Compliance with all European GMP and FCM regulations (good manufacturing practices and food contact material).
2. Tangible improvement of door bins supports’ filling
3. Account for sustainability aspects
   

Performance Requirements:

Electrolux is unable to provide specific performance criteria as these will be very solution-specific. Performance criteria will be generically evaluated by:

• Return on Investment (ROI) and ease of implementation
• Payback period
• Quality of improvements

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Challenge Owner(s)	Electrolux
Industry Types(s)	Circular Economy & Sustainability

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How might we innovate new solutions in Non-Destructive Testing (NDT) to enhance Electrolux's detection methods for identifying cracks and bubble formation in plastics and foam components, aiming to improve the quality and reliability of their materials and products?

It is a standard part of Electrolux’s testing and quality assurance protocol to test our appliances during or after assembly. As part of this testing process, we conduct tests specifically looking at bubble formation, and the formation of cracks in both plastic components and foam. We currently use a statistics-based testing method where we take a certain sample of the appliances and cut open/out the component, part or material we like to test to observe the foam and/or crack formation. This process is time-consuming, destructive and labor-intensive.

What We Are Looking For

Technical Requirements:

1. Solutions should be able to test a depth of 3 to 15 mm.
2. Solutions should be able to permeate through calcium and plastic materials.
3. Solutions should be able to detect bubble and crack diameters from 1mm and above
4. Solutions should be able to analyse and collate the location where cracks and bubbles form so we can analyse this afterwards
5. Ideally, solutions should include dashboards and KPIs so we can analyse and improve crack and bubble formation over time
6. Solutions should take less time than our current manual testing method. Any improvement that is significant is interesting and acceptable to us
7. Ideally, solutions should be installed within the assembly leading to a 100% test coverage. We understand this might not be feasible and are also willing to accept a statistics (sample-based) testing protocol outside of our assembly line
8. Solutions should be fully compliant with quality, ergonomy and safety standards
   

Performance Requirements:

Electrolux is not able to provide specific performance criteria as these will be very solution-specific. Performance criteria will be generically evaluated by:

• Return on Investment (ROI) and ease of implementation
• Payback period
• Quality of improvements

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Challenge Owner(s)	Electrolux
Industry Types(s)	Circular Economy & Sustainability

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How might we innovate new solutions to enable Electrolux to effectively test and ensure the resilience of their appliances against fluctuating electricity grid conditions, including pulses and surges, caused by the growing number of appliances connected to the grid?

It is a standard part of Electrolux’s quality assurance protocol to test our appliances during assembly. Standards tests consider elements like safety, functionality, and durability, and are performed in ideal laboratory conditions. Currently, Electrolux ensures our appliances are tested in full accordance with European Union (EU) regulations and standards.

While our tests are fully compliant with all regulatory frameworks, in today’s world, many households will have an increasing amount of additional appliances and devices that are connected to the grid. Some examples would include Electric Vehicle (EV) Panels and heat pumps. Usually, these devices and appliances are connected to an inverter to convert energy from DC to AC. These inverters often affect the energy grid and the current, and it is not currently possible to test such real-life conditions and scenarios.

What We Are Looking For

Technical Requirements:

1. Our current test protocol takes about 1 minute per appliance. In an ideal scenario, we would like to find a solution / test protocol that can be done in parallel within a similar time frame so that assembly is not affected.
2. We are willing to accept an additional testing time of up to 30 seconds (maximum), but would prefer to stay within the 1 minute total testing time.
3. The system should be able to check the variance output of different inverters. Together with solution providers, Electrolux can define a testing protocol that captures the most common household situations with a certain degree of confidence.
4. We would like to look at solutions that cause minimal disruptions to our existing assembly process.
5. If it is not possible to design a solution that can be fully integrated into our existing testing process, we are also open to looking at a stand-alone testing protocol in the lab. In such scenarios, tests would be done based on a statistical check.
6. The current standards we use are EN 30, EN 60335, EMC standard IEC 61000
   

Performance Requirements:

Electrolux is not able to provide specific performance criteria as these will be very solution-specific. Performance criteria will be generically evaluated by:

• Return on Investment (ROI) and ease of implementation
• Payback period
• Quality of improvements

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