Evaluation of design alternatives of End-Of-Life products using internet of things

Abstract

Internet of Things (IoT) can play a crucial role in End-of-Life (EOL) product recovery. It can help in determining conditions of returned EOL products with the help of sensors and RFID tags, which then can be used to decide a feasible recovery process for the EOL product amongst disassembly, remanufacturing, recycling or disposal. Product design is a key criterion which affects the choice of recovery process. Complex product designs will increase the cost of disassembly which will lead to higher recovery costs. Therefore, considering the recovery operations during a product's design phase can lead to effective recovery process after its EOL.In order to see the effect of product design on product recovery using IoT, this paper proposes an Advanced-Remanufacturing-To-Order-Disassembly-To-Order (ARTODTO) system which receives sensors and Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags embedded End-Of-Life (EOL) products to satisfy various products, components and materials demands. The received EOL products can be recovered via disassembly to meet the components demands, remanufactured to meet the products demands or recycled to meet the materials demands. The remaining EOL products can be disposed of. The model evaluates different designs of a product for the ease of disassembly and remanufacturing based on three criteria viz., total profit, quality level and the number of disposed items. To solve the proposed multi-criteria decision-making model, linear physical programming is used. An example of laptops is considered for illustration of the proposed methodology.