SUSTAINABILITY ANALYSIS AND CONNECTIVE

COMPLEXITY METHOD FOR SELECTIVE

DISASSEMBLY TIME PREDICTION

By

RAGHUNATHAN SRINIVASAN

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of

the requirements for the degree of

MASTER OF SCIENCE IN MECHANICAL ENGINEERING

WASHINGTON STATE UNIVERSITY

School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering

DECEMBER 2011

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To the Faculty of Washington State University:

The members of the Committee appointed to examine the thesis of

RAGHUNATHAN SRINIVASAN, find it satisfactory and recommend that it be

accepted.

______________________________

Gaurav Ameta, Ph.D., Chair

______________________________

Jitesh H. Panchal, Ph.D.

______________________________

Uma Jayaram, Ph.D.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This work would not have been possible without the constant support and guidance of

my mentor, Prof. Gaurav Ameta. I thank him profusely for providing me with the best

environment to work. I am grateful to him for giving me the freedom to explore and the

excellent opportunities to learn and grow as a researcher.

I would like to thank my committee members, Dr. Jitesh H. Panchal and Dr. Uma

Jayaram for sparing their valuable time to interact with me and for sharing their inputs

and feedback. I am grateful to them for accommodating my requests and deadlines.

I would like to thank all the members of the Sustainable Product Lifecycle Design

Lab and Collective Systems Lab at Washington State University. Thanks to He Huang,

Martin Baker and Bryant Hawthrone – it was an enriching and learning experience

working with you.

I would like to specially thank the faculty and staff of the School of Mechanical and

Materials Engineering for funding my education through a Teaching Assistantship. I also

thank them for all their support and effort to make my academic life a pleasant and

memorable one.

I would like to thank my brother Raghavendiran Srinivasan who is the constant

source of encouragement for all the work I do.

Thanks to all my friends for supporting me all through these years.

Last but not the least; I would like to thank my parents Jayalakshmi and Srinivasan

who are the key to success in every stage of my life.

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SUSTAINABILITY ANALYSIS AND CONNECTIVE COMPLEXITY

METHOD FOR SELECTIVE DISASSEMBLY

TIME PREDICTION

Abstract

by Raghunathan Srinivasan, M.S.

Washington State University

December 2011

Chair: Gaurav Ameta

The two main objective of this thesis are: 1) to develop a disassembly and

selective disassembly time prediction methodology and, 2) to evaluate the use

of environmental impacts of components in the selective disassembly time

prediction method. Disassembly time is very critical as it impacts the planning

and costs at the end of life of a product. Thus, disassembly time has direct

effects on the decisions and activities related to recycle, reuse, remanufacture

and disposal of a product.

The disassembly time prediction method first utilizes the assumption that

disassembly is the inverse of assembly and second uses the assembly time

prediction method. The assembly time prediction method is based on the use

of complexity metrics derived from assembly graph and bipartite graph of a

product. The notion of selective disassembly implies disassembling a product

in order to retrieve only a certain number of parts and not disassembling the

other components. There could be many applications for selective disassembly

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from disassembly for material recovery, parts reuse and remanufacturing to

reduction in environmental impacts associated to disposing a hazardous

component. The determination of selective disassembly time is based on

recovering most material for recycling. The assembly graph for a product is

re-organized to group together parts that are close and are of same material.

The modified assembly graph is then used to compute the selective

disassembly time. Although, the method developed targets material recovery

for recycling, it can be used for parts recovery for reuse, remanufacturing or

other such purposes.

One of the widely used methodologies to assess the environmental impacts of

a product is called Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). LCA is applied to selective

components of the case studies (i.e. standard toaster and the eco-friendly

toaster) using SIMAPRO 7 to calculate the environmental impacts. The

environmental impacts of the selected components can be further utilized for

decision making and planning regarding selective disassembly.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ......................................................................................................................... iii

Abstract ........................................................................................................................................................ iv

LIST OF TABLES ..................................................................................................................................... viii

LIST OF FIGURES ..................................................................................................................................... ix

Chapter 1 - Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 1

1.1 Background ................................................................................................................................... 1

1.2 Product Life Cycle ........................................................................................................................ 1

1.3 Design phase ................................................................................................................................. 3

1.4 Raw material phase ....................................................................................................................... 3

1.5 Life Cycle Assessment .................................................................................................................. 5

1.6 Disassembly .................................................................................................................................. 6

1.7 Problem Statement ........................................................................................................................ 8

1.8 Outline........................................................................................................................................... 9

Chapter 2 - Literature review ...................................................................................................................... 10

2.1 Disassembly Modeling ...................................................................................................................... 11

2.2 Assembly and Disassembly time estimation ..................................................................................... 12

2.3 Life Cycle Assessment ...................................................................................................................... 13

Chapter 3 – Life Cycle Assessment of the toasters based on selective components for recycling ............. 14

3.1 Background ....................................................................................................................................... 14

3.2 Disassembly and Selective disassembly ........................................................................................... 14

3.3 Components investigated .................................................................................................................. 15

3.4 Life Cycle of a Toaster ..................................................................................................................... 17

3.5 Use Phase Energy Calculation .......................................................................................................... 18

3.6 Impact Assessment Methodology ..................................................................................................... 20

3.6.1 Using SIMAPRO ........................................................................................................................... 21

Chapter 4 – Assembly Time calculation using Connective Complexity Matrices method ........................ 26

4.1 Complexity design ............................................................................................................................ 26

4.2 Complexity Metrics .......................................................................................................................... 26

4.3 Methodology ..................................................................................................................................... 27

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4.3.1 Assembly Graph ............