A Reference Model for Ubiquitous Product Recovery Management System: An Architecture and Customization Process

DoctorDue to concerns about environmental protection and resource utilization, product lifecycle management for end-of-life (EOL) has received increasing attention in many industrial sectors including manufacturing/maintenance/repair, and recycling/refurbishing product. PRMS (Product Recovery Management System) is a crucial means for supporting efficient recycling and remanufacturing in the EOL stage of a product. To realize effective product recovery from PRMS, it is necessary to get accurate information (such as how the product was manufactured and used). Ubiquitous computing technology can be used as the fundamental means for storing and capturing accurate information when the product is used. It can be used to identify the product record and aggregate the context information for the product lifecycle database. Up to the present time, most researches have been concerned with new architecture of PRMS based on ubiquitous computing technology (u-PRMS) under the assumption that the scope of own research includes a development of new information infrastructure covering whole product life cycle using specific technology such as RFID. In this reason, it is difficult to realize such u-PRMS encompassing the while product life cycle, a new and innovative customizationprocess under a comprehensive architectureIn this paper, we addressed necessity of new architecture and customization process for u-PRMS, followed by development issue of such a PRMS. We proposedan architecture of u-PRMS for EOL activities based on our previous publication [1].Then, we focus on how to develop such a u-PRMS by proposing a reference model including a comprehensive architecture and a customization process. To show the validity and effectiveness of the reference model, two case studies for remanufacturing an engine part of construction machineries and a battery of electric vehicles has been developed. Through the case study, we are convinced the proposed reference model can be applied for developing u-PRMS for other products