Development of a framework for disassemblability design optimization for sustainable manufacturing

Sustainable Product development is seen as an inevitable solution in protecting the environment. Among the important strategy in sustainable product development is through product recovery by closing the loop. Product recovery enables the reuse of depleting source of virgin material as well as avoiding the accumulation of solid waste. Maintenance can be also considered as a strategy towards sustainable product by prolonging product life time. The success of product recovery and maintenance is highly dependant on the time and cost efficiencies of the disassembly process. This paper reviews the various methods used to evaluate disassemblability. The development of the methods and its application are reviewed to provide an understanding of any missing links that have hampered the wider implementation of disassemblability design evaluations. The paper then proposes a disassemblability optimization model that can provide the missing link between design and disassembl

An intelligent approach to recyclability evaluation in automobile design

An automobile comprises of thousands of parts of which 74-75% is composed of ferrous and nonferrous material and 8-/0% are from plastics, and typically only less than 75% of weight can be recycled and the rest cannot. As a result this leads to an increasing number of landfill required. Unfortunately, there is no more space available. With the importance of environmental protection and sustainable development; recyclability of materials is now becoming increasingly important in automobile design. Recyclability measures the efficiency of material recycling. Due to environmental regulation, automobile manufacturers are working to improve recyclability as well as reducing amount of recycle material to be used in new vehicles. One approach to evaluating recyclability during automobile design is mandatory needed to asses and give consideration whether the design has meet certain recyclability level. Although many approaches have been proposed by several authors, there is still a need for an intelligent solution that combines CAD system with recyclability evaluation in a single application. The purpose is to incorporate environmental consideration during the design phase. This paper attempts to propose an approach for recyclability evaluation using fuzzy method. A case study on an automobile s side mirror parts is presented to give clear figure how recyclability evaluation works

Development of method for optimizing product end of life strategies in modular design

Product modularity is a concept and process of clustering the independent components into logical units that are relatively independent to each other in functions. Nowadays, modularity in product design has been expanded to wider application in the industry. Particularly, product modularity focuses on function and manufacturability issues. With the growing interest in environmental protection, the inclusion of product end of life issues during product design has been seen as a promising method to improve product utilization after its retirement for the purpose of preserving natural resources by prolonging the use of the products or materials. In the literature, however, it was found that very few methodologies were dealing with modularity at the conceptual design stage. With lacking of this available information during conceptual design, it failed to overcome drawbacks that apparent later in the detail design. In addition, there is absence in the literature that explaining on method relating product modularity with product end of life strategies. Most of the product modularity researches are in the tendency of catering life cycle issues rather than product end of life strategies. In line with the above motivation, this study tries to seek the parameter relationship between product end of life strategies and modular design with structure variation and formulate an optimization method that assist designers to design product with appropriate end of life strategies to reduce environmental impact during product retirement. Frequent variation of product specifications causes assembly and disassembly of components and modules to become more complicated, in which complicate product end of life strategies. Trade off between creating appropriate module in modular design with different end of life strategies is inevitable. Thus, a method of to improve product end of life strategies in a modular design is needed. As a result, the issue of product modular design with structure variation in relation with optimizing product end of life strategies is worthy to investigate. This paper proposed methodology for formulating product end of life strategies in modular design with structure variation. A case study is presented to show the usefulness of the method in modular design activities