Selective Complexity Determination at Cost Based Alternatives to Re-manufacture

The rise in demand and price for raw materials is pushing manufacturing industries to look for new ways to secure parts and products for their production while keeping the expenses low. Remanufacturing as the manifestation of circular paths can contribute towards sustainability (in terms of extension of use and reduction of waste). This work proposes a decision-support system to select, through adaptability, product and parts for remanufacture. It makes use of complexity analysis and production capacity (i.e., demand) to quantify costs. The complexity level was related with (i) characteristics of components and (ii) disassembly transitions. The decision system is conceived to assess, through inspection, the potential of a product/part for re-manufacturability based on failure pattern and recoverable rate. The re-manufacturability is evaluated, on cost alternatives, as per regeneration using additive or subtractive manufacturing, reuse of components/parts, recovery of materials, disposal. The additive alternative was analyzed over complexity (suggesting alternatives while estimating costs vs. complexity) which increases interest in the applicability to recover complex forms of limited (unplanned) demand. To demonstrate the applicability, authors quantified costs involving the remanufacturing of gear pumps parametrizing parts on a complexity amount after a relative product recyclability selection. Results evaluate (dis)assembly and regeneration across main feature assessment.