Layout Optimization Method Considering Disassemblability for the Facilitation of Reuse and Recycle

1. Abstract Due to rise of environmental awareness and enactment of legislation in recent years, products that reach their end-of-life need to be collected, disassembled and reused / recycled. However, since every component that comprises a product is not reused / recycled from a cost effective standpoint, a product needs not be completely disassembled and only components to be reused / recycled need to be removed from a product with less disassembly cost and work. The number of tasks required to remove each component from the product is seriously affected by layout of components comprising a product. Since component layout is roughly decided during conceptual design phase, it is desirable to decide components layout with consideration of disassembability during conceptual design phase. In this research, layout design during conceptual design phase is focused on and a new method of optimizing component layout considering its disassemblability is developed. In the proposed method, sequence triple is used to represent a three-dimensional component layout. To evaluate disassemblability of a layout, fitness function is defined based on the number of tasks required to remove components from a product and the value of those components. Optimal layout is explored by using genetic algorithm. In the case study, the proposed method is applied to an example calculation and layout design of internal devices of a laptop computer. 2.