A model for the economic assessment of disassembly-line integration in traditional manufacturing processes

Abstract Managing End-of-Life (EoL) products and reintroducing materials and components within the production loop become crucial for guaranteeing the Circular Economy business model. In such a way, the proper management of disassembly process for recovering components and materials from returned EoL products is essential as well as strategic: disassembly is the main gateway of information and can ensure economic returns. This paper aims to provide a model for the economic assessment of the introduction of a manual disassembly line in a traditional and already operating assembly line of manufacturing industries. Therefore, recovered components and materials could directly feed the assembly lines and the recycling processes. The model takes in input probabilistic factors, as products' characteristics, and provides the operating times and component recovery indicators, as well as allows the sizing of the right number of operators needed in the new disassembly line through the optimisation of the industrial cost. An interesting natural evolution of this study is the development of a model-based simulator, with the aim of providing a user-friendly tool to industrial practitioners to estimate the economic feasibility and convenience of introducing a disassembly line

A conceptual framework for measuring maintenance impacts on sustainability

2017 - 2018The paradigm of sustainable manufacturing has attracted a great deal of attention over the last decade as an emerging manufacturing approach intending to empower the enterprises to cope with several challenges (such as depletion of physical resources, stricter laws and regulations, economic stagnation, and customer request for higher product quality) and guide them to stand out in today’s competitive environment. Sustainable manufacturing is defined as creation of manufactured goods through the use of a series of processes that minimise the negative environmental impacts, conserve energy and natural resources, are safe for employees, communities and consumers, and are economically sound. In such today’s competitive industrial context, maintenance process is major lever of organisation efficiency. Indeed, maintenance provides company the ability to keep its production system in efficient state and able to provide product at the required quality. In that way, maintenance process has a large potential in pursuit of sustainable manufacturing thanks to its impact on other company’s processes. In fact, maintenance affects production volume and costs, asset performance, equipment availability, quality of the final product, but also health and safety of people, the surrounding natural environment and the social welfare. Maintenance has many direct and indirect impacts on sustainability-related aspects and a proper and sustainable management of maintenance processes lead to reduce and control such impacts. A sustainable maintenance management strives for more efficient resource and energy management, for reduction of wastes associated to maintenance, elimination of negative environmental impact, and guarantee of employees and stakeholders’ safety... [edited by Author]XXXI cicl

An approach to evaluate the impact of the introduction of a disassembly line in traditional manufacturing systems

Purpose: The circular economy (CE) paradigm, traditionally based on the 3R (reuse, recycle, and remanufacture) principles, provides benefits for sustainability and represents a big opportunity for manufacturing enterprises to reduce costs and take economic advantages. This paper proposes an approach that can help stakeholders transition towards CE oriented business by evaluating the economic convenience of introducing a manual disassembly line to recover the components of End-of-Life (EoL) products in a traditional manufacturing system. Design/methodology/approach: The conceptual approach is generic and based on the characteristics of EoL products and on the reusability and recyclability features of every component. Then, based on the type of product and the disassembly sequence, the disassembly line is built in the virtual environment along the assembly line. The virtual environment must take into account the probabilistic parameters that characterise each real industrial context. Therefore, the assembly-disassembly lines are linked with the variables and economic functions needed to process the outputs of the approach application. Findings: Implemented in a virtual environment, the proposed approach evaluates a priori possible economic and environmental benefits coming from the integration of a disassembly line within a manufacturing context. The approach considers the variability of the EoL products’ status (their reusability and recyclability indices), provides the optimal number of operators that must be assigned to the manual disassembly line and determines the maximum reduction of the product cost that can be gained by introducing the disassembly line. Furthermore, an application example is provided to show the potential of the tool. Originality/value: Recently, the scientific literature has dealt with the issue related to the disassembly process of EoL products from several perspectives (e.g. disassembly line scheduling, planning, balancing, with and without the consideration of the quality of EoL products). However, to the best of our knowledge, no study provided an approach to evaluate the convenience of the investment in a disassembly line. Therefore, this document contributes to this research field by proposing a simple approach that supports the decision-making process of traditional manufacturing enterprises to evaluate a priori the economic return (i.e. how much the product cost decreases) and provide an estimate of the environmental benefits of integrating a manual disassembly line of EoL products with a traditional manufacturing systemPeer Reviewe

an evolutionary approach for the offsetting inventory cycle problem

AbstractIn inventory management, a fundamental issue is the rational use of required space. Among the numerous techniques adopted, an important role is played by the determination of the replenishment cycle offsetting which minimizes the warehouse space within a considered time horizon. The NP-completeness of the Offsetting Inventory Cycle Problem (OICP) has led the researchers towards the development and the comparison of specific heuristics. We propose and implement a genetic algorithm for the OICP, whose effectiveness is validated by comparing its solutions with those found by a mixed integer programming model. The algorithm, tested on realistic instances, shows a high reduction of the maximum space and a more regular warehouse saturation with negligible increase of the total cost. This paper, unlike other papers currently available in literature, provides instances data and results necessary for reproducibility, aiming to become a benchmark for future comparisons with other OICP algorithms

A taxonomy of performance shaping factors for human reliability analysis in industrial maintenance

Purpose: Human factors play an inevitable role in maintenance activities, and the occurrence of Human Errors (HEs) affects system reliability and safety, equipment performance and economic results. The high HE rate increased researchers’ attention towards Human Reliability Analysis (HRA) and HE assessment approaches. In these approaches, various environmental and individual factors influence the performance of maintenance operators affecting Human Error Probability (HEP) with a consequent variability in the success of intervention. However, a deep analysis of such factors in the maintenance field, often called Performance Shaping Factors (PSFs), is still missing. This has led the authors to systematically evaluate the literature on Human Error in Maintenance (HEM) and on the PSFs, in order to provide a shared PSF taxonomy. Design/methodology/approach: A Systematic Literature Review (SLR) was conducted to identify and select peer-reviewed papers that provided evidence on the relationship between maintenance activities and human performance. The obtained results provided a wide overview in the field of interest, shedding light on three main research areas of investigation: methodologies for human error analysis in maintenance, performance shaping factors and maintenance error consequences. In particular, papers belonging to the area of PSFs were analysed in-depth in order to identify and classify the PSFs, with the aim of achieving the PSF taxonomy for maintenance activities. The effects of each PSF on human reliability were defined and detailed. Findings: A total of 63 studies were selected and then analysed through a systematic methodology. 46% of these studies presented a qualitative/quantitative assessment of PSFs through application in different maintenance activities. Starting from the findings of the aforementioned papers, a PSF taxonomy specific for maintenance activities was proposed. This taxonomy represents an important contribution for researchers and practitioners towards the improvement of HRA methods and their applications in industrial maintenance. Originality/value: The analysis outlines the relevance of considering HEM because different error types occur during the maintenance process with non-negligible effects on the system. Despite a growing interest in HE assessment in maintenance, a deep analysis of PSFs in this field and a shared PSF taxonomy are missing. This paper fills the gap in the literature with the creation of a PSF taxonomy in industrial maintenance. The proposed taxonomy is a valuable contribution for growing the awareness of researchers and practitioners about factors influencing maintainers’ performance.Peer Reviewe

Special Issue: Smart manufacturing forsustainability: Trends and research challenges

Peer Reviewe

Il paesaggio rurale dell'Alto Mugello: un approccio multidisciplinare per la sua conservazione

The present study describes a methodology for the evaluation of the territorial ecological-landscaped aspects related to the multifunctional role of the farms. The resultables turn out allow an optimization of the safeguard interventions and cultural, environment, valorization useful to contrast the degenerated process of the landscape and rural environment. For the farms analysis, they have been used data of the V Census of Agriculture of 2000, that introduces one useful section for the georeferencetion of the farms data. The possibility to have information punctual and localized about structures which currently the garrison of the territory is remitted, that is, farms, opens interesting perspectives for analysis processes and territorial plannin

Position Paper of the Italian Association of Medical Oncology on Early Palliative Care in Oncology Practice (Simultaneous Care)

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