Natural resource depletion has become one of the major threats for the future sustainable development. One of the keys is to recover end-of-life (EOL) assembled products which avoids the manufacturing of new resources. Life cycle options for recovering assembled products namely methods consist of reuse, recycling and disposal. Reuse is the recovery of the whole product/parts, and recycling is the recovery of the material within the products/part. Since the assembled products include diverse material type and numerous numbers of parts, manual disassembly entailing high labor cost is required. Additionally, obsolescence of the product/parts that effects the value and the reliability is another obstacle. The obsoleteness of the product/parts, relied on the reliability such as life expectancy and the failure rate for the parts, brings uncertainty to the profitability for reuse of the EOL assembled products. To overcome the issue, strategies for selecting the life cycle options for each part should be established to recover EOL assembled products environmentally friendly and economical in actual recycling factories.
This study proposes an environmentally friendly and economical life cycle option selection method for disassembly parts maximizing the recovery rate and minimizing recovery cost considering reliability. Firstly, the recovery rates and costs failure rate are estimated. Secondly, the procedure of the proposed life cycle option selection method is explained. Finally, a case study of a computer is examined.