A modular product design approach for sustainable manufacturing in a fuzzy environment

Green modular product design is a very crucial technique for sustainable manufacturing. By making good choices of combinations of the available components and modules of a design, it is possible to build sustainability into the life cycle of a product. For effective modular design, it is critical to know the design factors and their potential impact on the ultimate economic, environmental, and the social performance of the product or process. Nevertheless, in a fuzzy environment, one or more factors are not precisely known at the design stage. First, we propose a set of multiple criteria for evaluating a modular product design. Second, a fuzzy grouping genetic algorithm (FGGA) is proposed for grouping components of a design in a modular fashion. The proposed modular product design approach is promising, especially when the design factors and the criteria for sustainability evaluation are not precisely known at the design stage. (C) 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.