Identifying and analyzing the factors affecting disassembly of products in remanufacturing organizations

Abstract

Disassembly is a key operation that differentiates remanufacturing from traditional manufacturing. However, various factors that affects the process of disassembly are not clearly understood by the researchers. This study focuses on identifying and analyzing the factors that affect the disassembly process in remanufacturing organizations. A literature survey is conducted to identify the factors that can influence the disassembly of products. A total of 17 factors are obtained which are further classified into three main factors viz. Organizational Capabilities (OC), Process Choices (PC) and Product Attributes (PA). An approach based on Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) is utilized to analyze the factors for developing a list of priority of these factors. A team of 8 experts from industry and academia is involved in this research for collecting their opinions. Results of this study show that product attributes play a key role in the disassembly of products for remanufacturing. ‘Value of recovered products’, ‘number of components’, ‘sequence of disassembly’, ‘volume of cores supply’ and ‘implementation of ecodesign principles’ are identified as the top five factors affecting the process of disassembly. The findings of this research can be useful for effective disassembly of products in remanufacturing based organizations. The decision makers of remanufacturing organizations can use the priority list of factors developed in this study for managing the disassembly activities in the organization.