Reverse design for remanufacture based on failure feedback and polychromatic sets

Abstract

Design for remanufacture (DfRem) plays an important role in improving remanufacture efficiency of end-of-life (EOL) products. Some studies revealed that the barriers of DfRem are mostly hidden in the failure modes of EOL product. However, one of the DfRem challenges is how to integrate failure feedback into the product’s design process. To address this problem, this study offers a novel Reverse Design for Remanufacture (RDfRem) method to offer redesign strategy for improving the remanufacturability of product based on failure feedback and polychromatic sets. An integrated model, namely, Reverse DfRem Polychromatic Model (RDPM), was developed to describe the relationship among the product’s components, failure modes, scrap modes, economic and obsolescence criteria, and EOL product recovery options based on the theory of polychromatic sets. Thus, the DfRem of product could be formally described mathematically and manipulated by using the computer system. Furthermore, a redesign proposal polychromatic reasoning method was designed to identify the proposed architecture of product. Then redesign proposals were provided to improve the remanufacturability of product. Finally, a simple example was considered to illustrate the entire framework of the proposed method and the case study of an engine validated the feasibility of the method proposed in this study.