Economical evaluation of disassembly operations for recycling, remanufacturing and reuse

This paper introduced a procedure which integrates economical factors into the scheduling of disassembly operations for Material Recovery Opportunities (MRO). MRO are defined as opportunities to reclaim post-consumer products for recycling, remanufacturing and reuse. Traditionally, recyclers have resorted to using heuristics for analysing the breakdown of products and the associated costs. In this paper, a quantitative method of disassembly analysis is developed. Its aim is to improve the efficiency of the disassembly planning process and to generate an optimal disassembly sequence which maximizes profit. Three economic indices are used to evaluate the trade-off between reclamation and disposal of individual components. A systematic procedure of generating an optimal disassembly sequence based on maximizing the profits of material recovery is presented. Three criteria are established to reduce the search space and facilitate recovery opportunities: (1) material compatibility, (2) clustering for disposal and (3) concurrent disassembly operations. An example is provided on a product being disassembled for recycling at a local recycling plant in Canada.