Representations: Reconciling Design for Disassembly Rules With Design for Manufacturing Rules

Abstract

The paper presents a tool for selecting appropriate Design for Manufacturing and Design for Assembly rules during product design while considering Design for Disassembly rules and end-of-life recovery conditions. This tool exposes the relations between the various types of design rules and end-of-life recovery parameters. Four different relationship types are developed in this research: recovery conditions and recovery options relationship, Design for Disassembly rules and recovery options relationship, Design for Disassembly rules and recovery conditions relationship, Design for Disassembly rules, and Design for Manufacturing and Design for Assembly rules relationship. The purpose of this research is to build these relations and transform these relationships into a database. The database serves as tool from which design rules can be retrieved by running queries. In addition to design rule retrieval, the tool also shows the relationships with various design rules, recovery options, and recovery conditions. This provides designers with information as to which rules are in conflict and which are complementary for the specific situation under consideration. To illustrate this tool, it is applied to motor-drive assembly and thermal gun sight, which are already design products. Additionally the application of the tool is demonstrated using a hypothetical scenario which involves products like coffee cup, cell phone and stapler.