The FM Management Plan is one of the defining elements of an R2-certified Facility. Let's begin by looking at why FM Management Plans are required to start at the equipment level. 

Remember, the FM Management Plan should tell the story of what happens to the equipment and components containing Focus Materials at the R2 Facility and through the downstream chain. This story takes the equipment from being R2 Controlled to either Functional products or Unrestricted Streams. Because different types of equipment containing Focus Materials require different processes, the FM Management Plan must be specific for each equipment type.  

For example, the FM Management Plan's description of processing smart phones will differ from the description of processing desktop computers.  We all understand that nearly everything coming in the door at an R2 Facility has FMs, so unless your Facility handles only very exclusive material, such as a CRT glass recycler who only receives CRT glass or a cell phone refurbisher who receives only cell phones, you should expect to list a lot of whole electronics in the FM Management Plan, like laptops, desktops, printers, and phones. 

To get a better understanding, let’s take a brief look at the wording of the standard. Notice that the FM Management Plan requirements are broken into three sections.  

Let’s start with section three, the downstream recycling chain flowchart. It says that an FM Management Plan shall include: 

This chart must list all facilities in the recycling chain down to – and including – the final disposition facility or the first R2 Facility in the chain. Note that, since facilities are location based, this flowchart must also have the specific address of each downstream listed with the facility name. Note also that this flowchart should include all R2 Controlled Streams, not only those containing FMs. 

Let’s move on to sections one and two. Here, the R2v3 Standard requires the FM Management Plan to include: 

Pay special attention here. The Standard requires Facilities to indicate the: 

• expertise,  
• capabilities,   
• methods, and   
• capacity  

to process each type of electronic equipment containing an FM. This is how a Facility tells the story of each equipment type.  

Remember, the FM Management Plan should not simply list out the FMs that are accepted and processed. The standard requires the FM Management Plan to address each TYPE of electronic equipment containing an FM. Facilities need to indicate what they are doing with each type, because it is going to be different depending on what their expertise and capabilities are,  the method of processing, and how much they are able to process in a given amount of time. 

Suppose there is a Facility with the following scope statement: 

The scope statement gives some idea of what is happening at the facility, but what types of processes are they doing with the smartphones? Are they replacing batteries in laptops and smartphones? What kind of monitors? Flat-panels, CRTs, or both? What are they doing with the monitors? The FM Management Plan will help others to know what they could expect to see at the Facility.  

Breaking down the scope by equipment-type, we can see that there are some common types of electronics containing FMs. 

Laptops often have circuit boards, batteries, and mercury. 

Flat-panel monitors have been known to hold circuit boards and mercury. 

Smartphones generally contain circuit boards and batteries. 

The methods for each of these equipment-types will probably look a bit different, and the processes may even be done in different departments.  

For example, the Facility may test each of these equipment-types and may perform logical data sanitization for only the laptops and smartphones, but not for the monitors. In addition, they may “repair” laptops by replacing any bad batteries. In this case, their FM Management Plan might look something like this. Notice that the methods show how the Facility plans to bring the FM-containing equipment from R2-controlled to functional or unrestricted. 

For simplicity, let’s follow the Laptops in the example FM Management Plan. 

There are going to be constraints to the CAPACITY the R2 Facility can process. R2 Facilities are required to demonstrate that capacity, which should be indicated as a QUANTITY in a specified amount of TIME. Think about what the limiting factors are. 

These could include: 

• restraints on space due to Facility Size 
• or the Employee Count and the amount of material the employees are able to process 
• or even limitations given by Regulatory Agencies for the amount of a certain material allowed on-site in a given amount of time.  

Note that the FM Management Plan may not indicate WHAT the limiting factors to the capacity are – it may simply say what the capacity IS. Capacity may also be indicated elsewhere, such as in the R2 Facility’s Closure Plan. This does not mean it can be left out of the FM Management Plan. 

In addition to methods and capacities for each equipment type, facilities must indicate their expertise and capabilities in the FM Management Plan. Think about how the employees know what they are doing. What makes them the experts compared to others that work at the Facility, or even others in the field? What equipment and resources are present to make the Facility and its employees able to perform these specific operations? 

An FM Management that includes these necessary details might look something like this:   

And don’t forget, all of this must be included in the FM Management Plan for each of the Downstream Vendors. It should map out which FM-containing equipment the downstream vendors manage and how they manage those equipment-types according to the Hierarchy. This graphic shows how an FM Management Plan might cover downstream vendors. 

As you can see, the FM Management Plan is meant to tell the story of what types of equipment are handled by the Facility, how they are handled at the Facility, and how they are handled downstream. A Facility’s FM Management Plan should be a sort of virtual tour of the Facility and the Downstream Vendors, allowing anyone to easily see the expertise, capabilities, methods, and capacity each equipment-type. 

As a final note, the FM Management Plan used as an example here is only one of many ways an FM management Plan might be laid out. The important thing to remember is that the FM Management Plan must include the expertise, capabilities, methods, and capacities for each type of FM-containing equipment. How the FM Management Plan displays this information is up to each Facility.