Aggregating information regarding a group of manufactured products

Abstract

Disclosed is a computer-implemented method for managing lifecycles of a group of products, the method comprising: determining a purpose, wherein the purpose requires information of the group of products, that are manufactured physical products, and the purpose is for guiding a process of managing the lifecycles of the group of products, determining a code associated with the group of products, wherein the code comprises a subset string of characters of an identifying string of characters placed physically on each individual product of the group of products, based on the code, aggregating information comprised in at least one data field of each individual product comprised in the group of products, associating the aggregated information with the purpose, and providing the aggregated information as an input for the purpose.

Description

[0001] AGGREGATING INFORMATION REGARDING A GROUP OF MANUFACTURED PRODUCTS

[0002] FIELD

[0003] The exemplary embodiments discussed in the present disclosure relate to aggregating information regarding a group of manufactured products and utilizing that information for managing life cycles of the products.

[0004] BACKGROUND

[0005] When a product is manufactured in a factory, different types of materials may be used for the product. For example, there may be different types of metals, plastics, carbon fibres, and so on used to manufacture a physical product that at the end of its lifecycle can be recycled. When recycling, the material that is extracted from one product, may not be easily associated with the product after the recycling and re-using of the material, which partly originates from the product, takes place. Although information regarding the contribution received from one product to the outcome of the recycling may not always be of interest, it might be useful to understand for example how much of the material received as a product of recycling originates from a certain group of products.

[0006] BRIEF DESCRIPTION

[0007] The scope of protection sought for various embodiments is defined by the independent claims. Dependent claims define further embodiments included in the scope of protection. Exemplary embodiments, if any, that do not fall into any scope of protection defined in the claims, are to be considered as examples useful for understanding the scope of protection.

[0008] According to a first aspect there is provided a computer-implemented method for managing end-of-lifecycle of a group of products comprising one or more products, the method comprising: determining a purpose, wherein the purpose requires information of the group of products, that comprise one or more manufactured physical products, and the purpose is for guiding a process of managing the end-of-lifecycle of the group of products and wherein the purpose is to determine contribution of the group of products to an outcome of a crushing performed as part of recycling, determining a code associated with the group of products, wherein the code comprises a subset string of characters of an identifying string of characters placed physically on each individual product of the group of products, and wherein the identifying strings of each individual product are detected from the individual products; based on the code, aggregating information comprised in at least one data field of each individual product comprised in the group of products, associating the aggregated information with the purpose, and providing the aggregated information as an input for the purpose.

[0009] According to a second aspect there is provided a computing system comprising means for performing the computer-implemented method of the first aspect.

[0010] In some examples according to the second aspect, the means comprises at least one processor, and at least one memory including computer program code which, when executed by the at least one processor, causes the performance of the computing device.

[0011] According to a third aspect there is provided a computer program product comprising instructions, which, when executed by a computing system, cause the computing device to perform a computer-implemented method according to the first aspect.

[0012] According to a fourth aspect there is provided a non-volatile computer- readable medium comprising program instructions stored thereon which, when executed on a computing system, cause the computing system to perform a computer-implemented method according to the first aspect.

[0013] BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

[0014] Some of the exemplary embodiments are discussed with reference to the figures in which:

[0015] FIG. 1 illustrates an example of a lifecycle of a product.

[0016] FIG. 2 illustrates an example in which a database stores information regarding a plurality of registered products.

[0017] FIG. 3 illustrates a flow chart according to an exemplary embodiment.

[0018] FIG. 4 illustrates an exemplary embodiment of a computing device.

[0019] DETAILED DESCRIPTION

[0020] Products that comprise materials that can be recycled at the end of a lifecycle of the products, may be a significant source of materials, such as different kinds of metals. This allows re-using materials thereby making better use of limited resources. Examples of products that can be recycled at the end of their lifecycle include vehicles, such as cars or motorcycles, computers, and / or household appliances. As there are products, that can be recycled by extracting materials, such as metals, from them, it may be of interest to understand how much different groups of products each contribute to the obtained recycled materials that may be re-used. For example, a manufacturer may produce a certain type of product for a few years. Out of those, it may be of interest to understand that when, and how much, they provide, or are expected to provide, materials for re-use. Thus, if a manufacturer wishes to improve their efficiency of resource usage, they may be interested in knowing how much they can get used materials back for re-use when manufacturing new products for example.

[0021] Figure 1 illustrates an example of a lifecycle of a product. In this example, the product is a car 100 that is manufactured by a manufacturer 120. The manufacturer may be a company, for example, that may buy the actual manufacturing from a sub-contractor operating a factory, or the manufacturer may itself operate the factory. As the manufacturer produces the car 100, the manufacturer knows the amount of each material that is used for the car 100 and thereby how much of each material is comprised in the car 100. This information may be stored by the manufacturer such that it is available for example from a database throughout a lifecycle of the manufactured product, which in this example is the car 100.

[0022] The manufacturer may also determine a unique identification string for the car 100 and place that identification string on the manufactured car 100 as a physical identification string, such that it is physically detectable on the car 100. The identification string may then identify the car 100 in a globally unique manner. The identification string may then also indicate a group of products that the car 100 is comprised in, it other words, the group of products the car 100 belongs to. For example, the group may be determined based on a product line of the car 100 indicated by its model and / or sub-group(s) such as a variety of the model depending on for example technical aspects such as the engine type and / or whether the car 100 is a four-wheel drive, and / or whether it has automatic gears, and so on. The grouping, as well as its potential sub-groups, may be determined by the manufacturer and they may be indicated using the identifying string. The identifying string may comprise a string of characters such as number, letters, and / or special characters.

[0023] As the car 100 is then ready and is sold to be taken in use, the car 100 may need to be registered, and thus it may become a registered product. When registering, the information regarding the car 100 is stored in a database 110, that may be of any suitable type, that is used for registering the car 100. For example, different officials in different countries may have their respective one or more databases for registering products that are to be registered such as cars or motorcycles. As the databases in different countries may comprise different manners of registering the products, the fields of information, which may also be referred to as data fields, may vary depending on the country. Yet, the identification string may be saved as an identifying field of information in each database such that the car can be globally uniquely identified. The information comprised in the database 110 regarding the car 100 may comprise the technical information regarding the car 100 that is available from the manufacturer 120. This information may be provided by the manufacturer directly, or by another party performing the registering. Optionally, data field indicating materials comprised in the car 100, as well as their amounts, may be stored as data fields as well.

[0024] The model of the car 100 may also be stored as a data field to the database 110. The model of the car may have a different label, such as a name or a combination of numbers, in different countries. The model may be a group in which the car 100 is comprised. As the model is also indicated in the identification string, this allows the group to be identified even if the naming of the model would be different in different countries. As the car 100 is registered by its respective officials to the database 110 used by the respective officials, the registering may comprise data field(s) indicating technical characteristics of the car 100, as well as data field (s) indicating contextual information regarding the car such as a location for the car, the owner of the car and so on. The database 110 therefore comprises information regarding the car 100 based on which a digital representation of the car may be obtained. The digital representation may be a collection of one or more data field(s) associated with the car 100. Alternatively, or additionally, a digital twin of the car may be generated. As the database 110 comprises the information regarding the car 100 in a digital format, then that information may be copied and transmitted in digital format. Additionally, the data fields may be queried and thus information regarding the car 100 may be fetched from the database 110 by using a query.

[0025] As the car 100 then then reaches the end of its life cycle, it may be understood to be an end-of-life cycle product that is then taken to recycling entity 130. The recycling entity may then extract some parts of the car 100 to be used as spare parts for example, and at least partly the car 100 may then be crushed using a crusher. As the car 100 is received at the recycling entity 130, this information regarding the car 100 to be recycled, may be stored to the database. Additionally, or alternatively, the recycling entity 130 may then fetch information regarding the car 100 and use that information to keep a record of vehicles recycled. In order to be able to correctly verify the vehicle, the recycling entity 130 may detect the identifying string from the car 100 and use that as a tool for fetching information from the database 110. This may be useful for example in case the license plate of the car 100 is not available or is not a correct license plate, and / or the car has been in an accident.

[0026] Yet, as the crusher requires a variety of input material for proper functioning, different types of vehicles may be provided to the crusher which may cause it to be difficult to keep track of which vehicles have been part of producing the crushed material 140, which may be re-used for example to make new products. Therefore, the composition of the crushed material 140, and / or the products the material 140 originated from may not be easily know. Therefore, it is difficult to know what the contribution of an individual end-of-lifecycle product was, or even that of a group of end-of-lifecycle products. It is to be noted though that a group of products can comprise one or more products that fulfil the criteria of belonging to the group. One solution could be to group the cars that are from a same group, for example from the same manufacturer, as piles, but that would require lots of space and may not be practical. On the other hand, using the database 110, information regarding cars that were crushed may be known at individual level, but the significance of an individual car as a contributing factor to the crushed outcome may not be of relevance. Yet, what might be of interest is the total contribution of a group of manufactured products such as products belonging to the same product line from one manufacturer for example. Additionally, it might be of interest to know for example how much recycling potential there still is in use in a group of products such as a certain model of a car, as that may be used as an indication regarding future potential for receiving recycled material from those products. Thus, it may be of interest to obtain knowledge on a mass-level for the purpose of managing the lifecycle of the manufactured products. The managing of the lifecycle may also be understood in terms of managing the end-of the lifecycle of the manufactured products.

[0027] Figure 2 illustrates an example in which a database 200 stores information regarding a plurality of registered products, which, for the sake of ease of explanation, are in this example cars 210, 220, and 230. The database may be for example a national database of registered cars, such as the database 110 discussed in the previous example. The database 200 may be implemented using any suitable computing system, for example a server and / or cloud-based computing. The database may be considered as an external database as it is external to that of a manufacturer, for example. Yet, information from different manufacturers may be received into the database 200 and / or the different manufacturers, and / or other 3rdparties, may query the database.

[0028] In this example, there is the car 210 that is manufactured by a first manufacturer. The first manufacturer has placed the identification string on the car 210 as a physical identification string. The identification string then comprises also information regarding grouping of the car 210, such as which model and / or line of products of that manufacturer it belongs to. Thus, the identification string may indicate both the manufacturer and then at least the model. It may additionally indicate further sub-groups such as a variation of that model, which may be a variation for example with respect to technical characters of the car 210. Grouping may be understood to indicate the one or more groups the car 210 belongs to. The identification string, as well as groups and optional sub-group (s) may then be stored using respective data field(s) in the database. Additionally, further data field(s), such as described above, may be stored regarding the car 210.

[0029] In this example there is also the car 220, which is manufactured by the second manufacturer. The second manufacturer has also placed an identification string on the car 220. The identification string then comprises also information regarding grouping of the car 220, such as which model and / or line of products of the second manufacturer it belongs to. Thus, the identification string may indicate both the second manufacturer and then at least the model. It may additionally indicate further sub-groups such as a variation of that model, which may be a variation for example with respect to technical characters of the car 210. The identification string, as well as groups and optional sub-group (s) may then be stored using respective data field(s). Additionally, further data field(s), such as described above, may be stored regarding the car 210 to the database.

[0030] In this example there is also the car 230, which is manufactured by the third manufacturer. The third manufacturer has also placed an identification string on the car 230. The identification string then comprises also information regarding grouping of the car 230, such as which model and / or line of products of the third manufacturer it belongs to. Thus, the identification string may indicate both the third manufacturer and then at least the model. It may additionally indicate further sub-groups such as a variation of that model, which may be a variation for example with respect to technical characters of the car 230. The identification string, as well as groups and optional sub-group(s) may then be stored using respective data field(s). Additionally, further data field(s), such as described above, may be stored regarding the car 230.

[0031] An identification string may be understood as a uniquely identifying string that also comprise information regarding at least one group of products the identified product belongs to. It may additionally identify one or more sub-groups to the group of products. The group of products may be for example products from one manufacturer and then one sub-group may be a line of products that may be identified as a model of the product for example. The identification string is physically detectable on the product and may thus be detected from the physical product using any suitable detecting device. In case the identification string uses pre-determined one or more parts of the identification string to identify the group and / or sub-groups, then those pre-determined parts of the identification strings of individual products are the same for all products in the group and / or in the subgroup's). Using the sub-string(s), which may be continuous sequence(s) of a predetermined number of characters in the identification string, with optionally additional one or more other pre-determined sequences within the identification string, the database 200 may then be queried such that aggregated information for a group of products may be obtained.

[0032] For example, the sub-string may be used as a code for querying the database to understand how much potential recycling material there is in one model of cars from one manufacturer. On the other hand, the database may be queried to find out how much of recyclable material has been obtained from certain models and so on. Further, the recycling entity may then record digital representations of the vehicles they have recycled and then use the sub-string to obtain more detailed information regarding the contribution of one model of car for example and thus know the consumption of the obtained crushed material better.

[0033] The sub-string, which may also be referred to as a code, may be obtained for example based on the individual identification strings, such as the individual identification strings of a known group. For example, artificial intelligence, such as using a trained machine learning model, may be utilized to determine the relevant substring for each group and / or their sub-groups. Thus, once the substring is determined, then a database, such as the database 110, or 200, may be queried to retrieve the desired group of products, and / or information regarding them. It is to be noted that a new database may then be created based on the search results, and for the purpose of the new database, some of the data fields retrieved, that could be used to identify a person, may be discarded thus obtaining a database for a purpose of utilizing the database when obtaining aggregated information for the purpose of managing a lifecycle of at least some of the products comprised in the group of products. It is also to be noted that the new database may comprise different groups of products that are obtained by using their respective codes to search the original database. It is further to be noted that to the new database new information may later on be added as new subs-strings are used to query database (s) and the relevant information retrieved from those can be added to the new database. Thus, the new database may be understood as a clean database comprising merely information regarding the end-of-lifecycle products without any unnecessary information such as information that could identify individual people etc.

[0034] While in the new database information such as name(s) of the owner(s), their address, phone number, etc may be discarded, some information may be useful for the purpose of managing the lifecycle such as knowing the area in which the product is. For example, then there may be knowledge such as how much potential recycling material there is in different areas, what is the average age of the product when the recycling takes place and so on. This may help to understand for example future potential regarding how much, when, and from where there will be reusable material available for obtaining thorough the recycling, and the crushing process. Additionally, this information may help to identify the amounts of material that was expected versus how much was actually received, based on which it may then be determined how many products did not go through the recycling process at the end of their expected end of lifecycle. Further additionally, the information may also help to identify how many spare parts may be expected to be obtained as part of the recycling of the products. The locations of the products may also be used to identify where the spare parts may be expected to be obtained.

[0035] Optionally, also scores indicating recycling potential may be determined based on the data fields available in the new database for example. Such score may be determined for example for a group of the products, or for a subgroup. Additional limitations, such as age and location may be used when determining the score. For example, in a certain area it is more likely that the product will be recycled and that may increase the score. It is to be noted that the score may optionally be also determined for an individual product. The new database, which may be understood as a cleaned database for the purpose of handling life cycle of one or more groups of products, may be obtained by a recycling entity for example, or by any other entity. Additionally, in case there is information that is not available in the data fields of the original database, then that information may be obtained from the manufacturer of the group, for example, and thus the new database may be populated with new data fields. Thus, the new database may obtain information from various sources, for example, from various databases. For example, there may not be exact knowledge regarding the amounts of different materials comprised in individual products and then such information may be received from the manufacturer directly. A benefit of having the new database is that data which may be stored in different manners in their original databases, may be unified to be stored in the same manner by having unified data filed(s) for each entry in the database, and / or just information that is relevant for obtaining mass-level aggregated information for guiding future manufacturing process for example is stored, without the need to store information that would be sensitive in its nature, such as identifying owner(s) of a product.

[0036] Optionally, the manufacturer may be interested in knowing when, and how much of the material they have used for the previous product lines, will be available for them as a re-used material that can then be used when manufacturing new products. The new database may thus be useful in providing that information and helping the manufacturer to plan their manufacturing process and sourcing for materials for the manufacturing. Thus, the information obtained from the database using the code may be used for different purposes.

[0037] Figure 3 illustrates a flow chart according to an exemplary embodiment. The flow chart may be implemented using a computer-implemented method for example. Thus, the computer-implemented method may be performed when computer instructions are executed on a computing system comprising one or more computers.

[0038] First in the flow chart, in step SI, a purpose is determined. The purpose may be for guiding a process of managing a lifecycle of a group of products, for example end-of-lifecycle of the group of products. It is also to be noted that the group of products may comprise one or more products. Managing the lifecycle of the products may comprise obtaining aggregated information for the purpose, which may be for example to obtain information regarding how much of certain group of products has contributed to a set of recycled material obtained as a part of recycling process, how much material can be expected to be obtained from a certain group of products, from which geographical area and / or from which recycling entity that material can be expected to be obtained from, when can the material be expected to be obtained, and so on. This aggregated information may be obtained by aggregating information comprised in data fields of individual products comprised in the group of products.

[0039] The aggregated information may be for a purpose, and the purpose may be for example to plan and / or adjust manufacturing processes, which may then be performed based on the availability of material originating from one or more predetermined groups of products. The purpose may also be for example to understand the contribution the group of products have for an outcome of a crushing process that is performed for the group of products. Additionally, or alternatively, in case it seems that more material is required, and / or is required sooner than what is projected, then the manufacturer may for example provide additional incentives for the owners of the products in that group to take the product to the recycling earlier than they originally planned. Thus, the purpose may be understood as an item that requires aggregated information from a group of products as its input, and the purpose may be for managing a lifecycle of the products, for example, the end-of-lifecycle of the group of products. Thus, the purpose may be considered as a need for specific aggregated information that is then used as an input for guiding and / or planning a manufacturing process. The lifecycle of the products may be considered to continue after recycling as part of reused materials that may then be used to make new products and thus the lifecycle may be considered to continue at least partly even after the recycling. The group of products are manufactured products that may be manufactured by the same manufacturer, who may then determine the criteria for the group and for its optional sub-groups.

[0040] In step S2 then a code that identifies the group of products is determined. The code may be as described above. Thus, as each product comprises an identifying string, which is a physical string of characters detectable on the product and globally uniquely identifying the product, the code may then be a subset of that string of characters. The code may be detected from the physical product using any suitable detective device such as a camera. The subset may comprise a pre-determined number of those characters and at least some of the characters may be comprised as a continuous sequence. Thus, the subset may comprise one or more parts of consecutive one or more strings of the characters of the identifying string of characters. Thus, all products in the same group share the same code that is detectable in the same manner from their respective identifying strings.

[0041] It is to be noted that the code may be used to query any suitable database for aggregating information comprised in the relevant data fields, such as those comprising information regarding recyclable material, location, age of the product, and so on, of the individual products. The database may thus comprise digital representations of the individual products. The database may be for example that of an official register, such as the database 110, or 200 described above, or another database, for example the new, clean database such as that discussed in the context of figure 2.

[0042] Thus, then in step S3, the code is indeed used as a basis for aggregating information of data fields of the individual products. It is to be noted that in case the database is a clean database, optionally the code may be used to retrieve the information associated with the code each time the information is retrieved, and it may then be determined how many times the database is queried with that code. This allows there to be one entry per one group, and / or a sub-group. Alternatively, in case of a clean database, there may be a new identification field for each individual product comprised in the group and the new identification may be such that it does not identify any people associated with the product.

[0043] Then, in step S4, once the information has been aggregated, it is associated with the purpose determined in step SI. This may be performed for example by registering the purpose, definition of the purpose and when it was determined. Registering may be understood as storing, or saving, the purpose, which may have been received as an input based on which the database is queried to obtain the aggregation of information. The aggregation may then be associated with the purpose by for example associating the aggregated information, and when it was aggregated, with the purpose. The association may also be understood as a link, or a connection, between the purpose and the aggregated information. Which allows the aggregated information to be determined as the input to the purpose. This may allow there to be multiple aggregations of information for one purpose, which may be useful, for example, for associating aggregated information from different databases to the same purpose and thus allowing there to be more comprehensive information available for the purpose. Alternatively, or additionally, the aggregation of the information may be performed multiple times for the same purpose, for example in case the aggregation is to be made at different times to get updated information. This may allow associating the different aggregated information results with the same purpose thereby allowing for example monitoring of the development of the aggregated information.

[0044] Finally, in step S5, the aggregated information is then provided as an input for the purpose. The input may be provided using any suitable means. For example, by utilizing an application programming interface (API), transmitting it in a pre-determined data format and / or providing it as a visual output. The input may be provided for example to a party that defined the purpose, which may be for example the manufacturer or the recycling entity.

[0045] It is to be noted that in case the recycling entity has a database, for example a clean database, or any other suitable database, it may enter into it a product, that is received for recycling, as an entry, and / or update an existing entry, based on detecting the code from the manufactured product it has received for recycling. This allows the recycling entity to know for example what type of a product was received and also to know what type of products have gone through the recycling process that may include crushing the product. Additionally, or alternatively, the recycling entity may also provide updates to another database based on the recycling, for example how many products of a certain group have been recycled and crushed during the recycling. Additionally, or alternatively still, the recycling entity may regularly update its database based on for example an official database of a register and / or information that is available from a manufacturer. This process may optionally require determining if there are updates to the code and / or how to detect that. It may be for example that a trained machine learning model is used to detect if the code is to be updated.

[0046] The examples discussed in this document are to be understood as being combinable with each other. A benefit associated with these exemplary embodiments is that managing a lifecycle, that includes recycling and reusing materials for new products, may be performed for a group of products, in other words, on a mass-level. This allows the manufacturer to have better visibility to the manufacturing process and to the lifecycle of products it manufactures. On the other hand, a recycling entity that for example crushes the products at the recycling phase of their life cycle, may then have better knowledge regarding the outcome of the crushing, such as how what is the percentage of a certain group of products in the outcome and thus what the composition of the outcome of the crushing is. This information may then be provided to the manufacturers of each of the groups of products for example. This way the manufacturer may follow the outcome of the crushing as it makes its way as a reusable material back to the manufacturer and then the manufacturer may have visibility to their new products utilizing the reusable material regarding how much of the new product is recycled and from which groups of products.

[0047] Figure 4 illustrates an exemplary embodiment of a device 400 that may be or may be comprised in a computing system comprising one or more computing devices. This exemplary embodiment is compatible with the previous exemplary embodiments, and they may be combined in any suitable manner. In this exemplary embodiment, there is at least one processor 440, at least one memory 430, at least one connectivity unit 410 and at least one unit for receiving input and providing output 420. It is to be noted that the units described here are logical units and thus the actual implementation may vary. The at least one processor 440, at least one memory 430, at least one connectivity unit 410 and at least one unit for receiving input and providing output 420 may be connected to each other.

[0048] The at least one processor 440 may also be referred to as core, a central processing unit (CPU), microprocessor or graphical processing unit (GPU). A processor may be understood as an integrated circuit for performing calculations according to instructions provided using computer code. The at least one memory 430 may comprise volatile and / or non-volatile memory. Thus, the at least one memory 430 may be understood to be one block of memory or a combination of different blocks of memory. The memory may be for storing different types of data. The at least one memory 430 stores also computer program instructions, for example in the form of an application and / or an operating system. The at least one memory 430 provides computer program instructions to the at least one processor 440 for executing and the at least one processor 440 may then be configured to store data into the at least one memory 430. Some examples of memory are random access memories (RAMs), such as static RAM (SRAM) and dynamic RAM (DRAM), read-only memory (ROM), flash memories, optical discs, and magnetic computer storage devices, such as hard disk drives. The input and output unit 420 may allow user input, such as pressing a button, touch input and / or voice input, to be received by the device 400 and output such as audio, haptic or visual output to be provided to a user. The connectivity unit 410 allows connection to be formed between the device 400 and another device. The connectivity unit may allow wireless and / or wired connections to be formed between the device 400 and other devices. Examples of connection types that may be supported by the connectivity unit 410 are cellular communication -based connections, local area networks, Bluetoothconnections, Wi-Fi connections, etc. The present disclosure has been described above with reference to the exemplary embodiments. However, a person skilled in the art will understand there may be embodiments that vary from the example embodiments discussed above within the scope of the claims. Thus, skilled person will understand that the exemplary embodiments described above may, but are not required to, be combined with each other and / or other exemplary embodiments in various manners.

Claims

CLAIMS1. A computer-implemented method for managing end-of-lifecycle of a group of products comprising one or more products, the method comprising: determining a purpose, wherein the purpose requires information of the group of products, that comprises one or more manufactured physical products, and the purpose is for guiding a process of managing the end-of-lifecycle of the group of products and wherein the purpose is to determine contribution of the group of products to an outcome of a crushing performed as part of recycling; determining a code associated with the group of products, wherein the code comprises a subset string of characters of an identifying string of characters placed physically on each individual product of the group of products, and wherein the identifying strings of each individual product are detected from the individual products; based on the code, aggregating information comprised in at least one data field of each individual product comprised in the group of products; associating the aggregated information with the purpose; and providing the aggregated information as an input for the purpose.

2. A computer-implemented method according to claim 1, wherein the at least one data field is a data filed of a first database and the first database comprises entries of the individual products comprised in the group of products.

3. A computer-implemented method according to claim 2, wherein the first database is created based on one or more other databases and / or the database first comprises entries for products that are comprised in one or more other groups of products.

4. A computer-implemented method according to any previous claim, wherein the group of products comprises vehicles and the group is determined based on the model of the vehicle.

5. A computer-implemented method according to claim 4, wherein the group of products comprises at least one sub-group, and the at least one sub-group is defined by a technical characteristic of vehicles comprised in the group of products.

6. A computer-implemented method according to any previous claim, wherein the method further comprises determining a score for at least one of the products comprised in the group of products, wherein the score is for determining potential for recycling, and the potential indicates how much material can be obtained for re-use when making new products.

7. A computer-implemented method according to any previous claim, wherein the code comprises at least one part of the identifying string of characters that comprises a pre-determined number of consecutive characters of the identifying string of characters.

8. A computer-implemented method according to claim 7, wherein the code further comprises at least another part from another part of the identifying string of characteristics.

9. A computer-implemented method according to any previous claim, wherein the code is determined using a trained machine learning model.

10. A computer-implemented method according to any previous claim, wherein the purpose is further to determine potential for recycling the group of products.

11. A computer-implemented method according to any previous claim, wherein the purpose is to plan and / or adjust a manufacturing process based on recycling potential, and / or contribution to the recycling outcome, of the group of products.

12. A computer-implemented method according to any previous claim, wherein the products are registered products.

13. A computing system comprising means for performing the computer-implemented method according to any of claims 1 to 12.

14. A computer program product comprising instructions, which, when executed by a computing system, cause the computing device to perform a computer-implemented method according to any of claims 1 to 12.

Images