Impact of various issues on extending the useful life of a product through product recovery options

Abstract

Due to the growing consciousness towards environment and stringent governmental legislations, manufacturers are incorporating product recovery activities in their business processes. In product recovery process, used products are collected after their end-of-use from the customers and their retained usable values are recovered through value additive operations. The product recovery options not only reduce the disposal of wastes but also extend the useful life of product. In this paper, we try to identify various issues from literature review, which influence the extension of useful life of products through product recovery options. These issues are further classified into five major decision areas namely product design issues, operational issues, market related issues, governmental rules and legislations, and societal issues. The contextual relationships among these set of issues are studied by using Fuzzy Interpretive Structural Modelling (FISM), which reflects different levels of influence. Two case studies are highlighted here to compare the contextual relationships among these decision-making issues. The issues in the highest-level act as the prime enablers which trigger the extension of product life and help in formation of corporate strategies. The issues in the lower level generally act as operational issues.