Multi-Generational Product Family Design for Reliability and Environmental Sustainability

Sustainable product development is one of the most important sectors in the growing movement of green architecture and the early design decisions can have a remarkable impact on sustainability. Efforts have been made from multiple aspects to bring the environmental consideration into the early design phase, including analyzing the trade-off between reliability and repairability, conducting the life cycle analysis for products with multiple remanufacturing cycles, designing the generational commonality in the remanufacturing processes, and optimizing the usage of new and returned resources in production. However, most of the work focuses on either the sustainable design of a single product or a multiple life cycle analysis of a product component. There is no comprehensive evaluation for an initial product family design from both economic and environmental aspects when returned products can be remanufactured, critical components can be reused, and end-of-life materials can be recycled. This paper analyzed the interdependencies between reliability and take-back options like remanufacturing, reuse, refurbish and recycle. Then, a quantification method for the economic and environmental impact of a product family design considering the interdependences between different design principles throughout the lifecycle of a product is proposed, which can serve as the preliminary work for design optimization. Finally, a case study on a product family design has been evaluated to illustrate the proposed quantification method.