Disassembly-oriented assessment methodology for product modularity

Recently, people all over the world have paid much attention to green and environmental design. The proposal of design for end of life is to take into account the recycling problem in the product design stage. Under the consideration of economy, the green recycle of a product depends upon the relationship between recycling profit and recycling cost of the discarded product. This study attempted to build up a disassembly-oriented assessment method for product modular design in four stages. At Stage 1, the liaison intensity was used to quantify the connection relations among parts by their engineering information. At Stage 2, the product to be recycled was modularised by the grouping genetic algorithms. At Stage 3, the disassembly cost and recycle profit of the modules were evaluated. At Stage 4, an interference matrix was used to specify the disassembly sequential order of product modules and parts. Finally, the stapler was used as an example to illustrate the proposed assessment methodology.