Report of microstructural analysis of PEM failures

Issued as Final report, Project E-18-X29Final report has author: W. Jud Read

A product and process selection model with multidisciplinary environmental considerations

Introduction of product designs and process innovation requires a company to evaluate complex cost and environmental tradeoffs. In the past, these have not included environmental costs. This paper describes the first known analytical approach to capture comprehensively measurable corporate environmental impact considerations for the product life cycle. A mixed integer programming model is developed to select product and process alternatives while considering tradeoffs of yield, reliability, and business-focused environmental impacts. Explicit constraints for environmental impacts such as material consumption, energy consumption, and process waste generation are modeled for specified assembly and disassembly periods. The constraint sets demonstrate a new way to define the relationship between disassembly configurations and assembly activities through take-back rates. Use of the model as an industry decision tool is demonstrated with an electronics assembly case study.Journal Articl

Investigation of electronic assembly design alternatives through production modeling of life cycle impacts, costs, and yield

Environmental legislation, technological advances and increasingly competitive global markets have led to a number of different product and process design choices for electronics assemblies. Decision tools to aid in the selection of a product and process design have been limited to qualitative methodologies. In addition, trade-offs between environmental impacts, yield, and reliability have not been analyzed. In this paper, electronic assembly product and process design alternatives are investigated using a quantitative methodology with life cycle considerations for environmental impacts. These impacts include energy usage, material consumption, waste generation, process yield, and product reliability.Journal Articl