Simultaneous Evaluation of Environmental Impact and Incurred Cost on Selection of End-Of-Life Products Recovery Options

Abstract

Conventional production and consumption systems, in which industrial products are manufactured, consumed, and then finally disposed, have significant environmental impacts. Reusing and recycling product components in the manufacture of industrial products has recently become popular as an effective way of conserving natural resources. In this study, we propose a method to assign each product component a reasonable end-of-life (EOL) option (reuse, recycling, and disposal) in the product design phase. We develop a method, in which a product tree is generated by a multi-agent system, to determine EOL options considering component combinations based on environmental impact and incurred cost. In addition, we optimize the disassembly level for better reuse and recycling. The proposed determination method of EOL options for components in a product is justified by numerical examples using an inkjet printer.