Reliability-Informed Life Cycle Warranty Cost and Life Cycle Analysis of Newly Manufactured and Remanufactured Units

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Abstract Standard life cycle techniques such as life cycle warranty cost (LCWC) analysis and life cycle analysis (LCA) are used to respectively quantify the relative economical and environmental advantages of remanufactured goods while simultaneously identifying avenues for improvement. In this paper, we contribute to the literature on life cycle studies by incorporating reliability into LCWC analysis and LCA with the goal of improving long-term/multiple life cycle decision making. We develop a branched power-law model to incorporate the physical degradation mechanisms leading to reduced reuse rates of system parts over multiple life cycles. We then follow a standard LCA protocol to quantify the difference between a new unit and its remanufactured version in terms of environmental impact items such as abiotic depletion potential, global warming potential, and energy consumption. We then devise four practical warranty policies that vary in the choice of replacement and/or provision for extended warranty. All possible replacement scenarios for multiple life cycles are explored for each policy and a mathematically rigorous framework is provided, where the reliability information is used to calculate probabilistic LCWC and life cycle impact items. This reliability-informed LCWC analysis and LCA framework enables design engineers to compare design options and warranty policies by quantifying both economical and environmental impacts to aid in decision making. Although the framework is presented in a general form applicable to any engineered system, we demonstrate the utility of this framework by using a case study of an infinitely variable transmission used in agricultural equipment.