A Mass-Customization-Based Remanufacturing Scheme Design Method for Used Products

Abstract

Remanufacturing scheme design (RSD) is an essential step in the restoration and upgrading of used products. However, the quantity of remanufactured products is growing rapidly, and customers have personalized demands for remanufactured products that lead to shorter design cycles. In addition, the used products are scrapped due to their own defects, such as performance failure and functional degradation, which correspond to the inherent remanufacturing demand (IRD) of used products. Faced with large quantities of used products, how to quickly develop reasonable remanufacturing schemes for satisfying customers’ individual demands and the IRD is an urgent problem to be solved. To address these issues, a mass customization-based RSD method is proposed. First, remanufacturing demand comprising customer demand and the IRD is analyzed to determine the RSD targets and remanufacturing types. Then, the RSD methods are intelligently selected based on the remanufacturing types, which include restorative remanufacturing, upgrade remanufacturing and hybrid remanufacturing, while the hybrid contains restorative remanufacturing and upgrade remanufacturing. Moreover, the restorative remanufacturing scheme is generated to satisfy the restorative remanufacturing targets based on reverse engineering (RE) and the tool contact point path section line (TCPPSL) method. After used products are restored, case-based reasoning (CBR) is used to retrieve the case that best matches the upgrade remanufacturing targets, while the grey relational analysis (GRA) algorithm is applied to calculate the similarity between cases. Finally, the feasibility of this method is verified by considering the RSD of a used lathe. The results indicated that the proposed approach can rapidly help designers to obtain remanufacturing solutions for satisfying the customer demand and IRD.