Design for Disassembly Analysis for Environmentally Conscious Design and Manufacturing

Abstract Environmentally conscious design and manufacturing (ECDM) is becoming a very important issue in the manufacturing community. Adequate product reuse and recycling can greatly reduce waste generation, thus increasing product environmental compatibility. Design for disassembly analysis is a building block of an ECDM system. It is able to design or redesign products so that a higher percentage of the component parts can be reused or recycled. In this study, an economic model for optimal disassembly is formulated. Due to the nonlinear and combinatorial characteristics of the problem, a simulated annealing algorithm is employed to find the economically optimal sequences that yield the maximum return value, and to advise where the disassembly operation should stop. El shows the potential of analyzing the environmental friendliness of material selection, assembly configuration, and fastening methods. The proposed method is illustrated with a water pump assembly example.