Abstract

The use of household appliances continues to rise every year. A significant number of End-Of-Life (EOL) appliances are generated because of the introduction of newer models that are more attractive, efficient and affordable. Others are, of course, generated when they become non-functional. Many regulations encourage recycling of EOL appliances to reduce the amount of waste sent to landfills. In addition, EOL appliances offer the appliance manufacturing and remanufacturing industries a source of less expensive raw materials and components. For this reason product recovery has become a subject of interest during the past decade. In this paper, we study the disassembly line for appliance disassembly. We discuss and incorporate some of the complications that are inherent in disassembly line including product arrival, demand arrival, inventory fluctuation and production control mechanisms. We show how to overcome such complications by implementing a multi-kanban system in the appliance disassembly line setting. The multi-kanban system (MKS) relies on dynamic routing of kanbans according to the state of the system. We investigate the multikanban mechanism using simulation and explore the effect of product mix on performance of the traditional push system (TPS) and MKS in terms of controlling the system's inventory while attempting to achieve a decent customer service level.

Notes

Originally published in the Proceedings of the SPIE International Conference on Environmentally Conscious Manufacturing V, Boston, Massachusetts, pp. 30-41, October 23-24, 2005

Keywords

product life cycle, household appliances, multi-kanban system (MKS), Disassembly

Subject Categories

Recycling (Waste (etc.))

Disciplines

Engineering

Publisher

SPIE

Publication Date

2005

Rights Information

Copyright 2005, Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers

Restrictions

This paper was published in Proceedings of SPIE (Volume 5997) and is made available as an electronic reprint with permission of SPIE. One print or electronic copy may be made for personal use only. Systematic or multiple reproduction, distribution to multiple locations via electronic or other means, duplication of any material in this paper for a fee or for commercial purposes, or modification of the content of the paper are prohibited.

Rights Holder

Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers


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