Sustainable product design by a simultaneous consideration of pre-life and end-of-life of products

Minjung Kwak, Harrison M. Kim

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

Abstract

Product recovery has become a field of rapidly growing interest for product manufacturers as a promising solution for product stewardship as well as economic viability. As product recovery is a process highly dependent upon the way a product is designed, it should be considered early at the design stage so that the product may be designed to facilitate efficient and effective recovery at its end-of-life stage. To make a product easy to recover, manufacturing companies first need to understand the links between product design and recovery profit. They should be able to evaluate which design is better than others and why that is so. To accommodate such companies that seek for a design-for-recovery method, in this paper, a comparative study is conducted to analyze how design differences affect product recovery and what architecture characteristics are desirable from the end-of-life perspective. Three cell phone handset designs sharing the same design concept but entailing different architecture are created, for which the individual designs and the recovery potential of each design are evaluated under three different scenarios. The results highlight preferred design alternatives with their design implications for sustainable product design.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationProceedings of the ASME International Design Engineering Technical Conferences and Computers and Information in Engineering Conference 2009, DETC2009
Pages784-797
Number of pages14
EditionPART B
StatePublished - 2010
Event2009 ASME International Design Engineering Technical Conferences and Computers and Information in Engineering Conference, DETC2009 - San Diego, CA, United States
Duration: Aug 30 2009Sep 2 2009

Publication series

NameProceedings of the ASME International Design Engineering Technical Conferences and Computers and Information in Engineering Conference 2009, DETC2009
NumberPART B
Volume8

Other

Other2009 ASME International Design Engineering Technical Conferences and Computers and Information in Engineering Conference, DETC2009
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CitySan Diego, CA
Period8/30/099/2/09

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Computer Networks and Communications
  • Hardware and Architecture
  • Electrical and Electronic Engineering

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