Automated Analysis of Product Disassembly to Determine Environmental Impact

Manufacturers are increasingly being held responsible for the fate of their products during the end-of-life phase. In this research, a product’s end-of-life environmental impact is calculated as a function of cost and recyclability. Cost is associated with the time and effort of removing specific components. Recyclability is governed both by material type and how components of different materials are connected. This paper presents a graph grammar based algorithm which will analyze any product given information concerning individual components and how they are connected within the overall assembly. The result of this analysis is a set of Pareto optimal candidates representing various stages in the disassembly process and evaluated using associated costs and recyclability. This Pareto set can be used to judge a product’s end-of-life suitability against the manufacturer’s or industry standards, or against the suitability of a similar product.