Development of a design based remanufacturability index for automobile systems

The growing concern over environmental protection is prompting automobile manufacturers to develop products with better End-of-Life performance. Product remanufacturability is considered as an End-of-Life performance booster. Remanufacturability, that is, the easiness for remanufacturing of products depends on the technical, environmental, and economic feasibilities. The technical feasibility depends on the product design attributes that support remanufacturability. These design attributes are comprised of several sub-attributes. Moreover, the attributes are interrelated with each other. This paper develops a remanufacturability index for automobile systems based on the design attributes that affect the remanufacturability. A structural methodology of graph theory and matrix approach is applied for developing the remanufacturability index. The design attributes and their interrelations with due consideration of their structure is modelled through the graph theory. The remanufacturability directed graph (digraph) is defined; the nodes of this represent the remanufacturability enhancing design attributes, while the edges represent their degrees of interrelationships. The equivalent matrix of the digraph forms a remanufacturability function which leads to the evaluation of remanufacturability index. A higher value of the remanufacturability index indicates that the automobile system has high potential for being remanufactured. The methodology can be applied during the design stage of automobile systems to evaluate the remanufacturability that will enhance the End-of-Life performance. The observations would be helpful to automobile system designers in determining the extent to which the system can be remanufactured and in identifying the specific attributes that can be improved to enhance remanufacturability.