DOI 10.

1007/s00170-003-1809-5 ORIGINAL ARTICLE Int J Adv Manuf Technol (2004) 24: 925931 Hwai-En Tseng Wei-Shing Chen A replacement consideration for the end-of-life product in the green life cycle environment Received: 03 March 2003 / Accepted: 28 March 2003 / Published online: 5 May 2004 Springer-Verlag London Limited 2004 Abstract With the rapid development of electronics and semiconductor technology, the life cycle of personal computers is getting shorter. The design and development of such products has become a regular and necessary routine. Because of this trend, it is often the case that users need to upgrade their computers after a certain period of time to cope with problems that cant be handled with a less powerful machine. It is therefore urgent to reduce the upgrade expense and to save resources. To solve the problem, this study employs the economic benefit analysis of disassembling personal computers to reduce the cost of product upgrading and to help protect the environment and save resources. In the study, the authors first work out the total economic benefit analysis flow. Then, with product depreciation as the core concept, an algorithm is proposed. With the use of computer programming, the product salvage is calculated through the preliminary product database. In the interactive interface, suggestions for computer upgrade were provided for the users. Finally, personal computers are used as an example to illustrate the economic benefit analysis model. Keywords Depreciation Green life cycle engineering design Recycle 1 Introduction Only in recent years have people realised the importance of environmental protection. People are concerned about the context they are living in and the way people make use of resources. Because of limited resources on Earth, recycling and garbage classification have been given much attention. These methods, however, are passive methods, used in the launch, usage and damage of products. A more aggressive approach to this problem is to take into consideration product design and establish H.-E. Tseng () W.-S. Chen Department of Industrial Engineering, Da Yeh University, Changhwa, Taiwan, R.O.C. hwiaen@tcts.seed.net.tw environmentally friendly manufacturing requirements. This will allow resources to be used to their full potential. Furthermore, the damage rate is minimised, and the impact the product has on the environment is reduced as much as possible. Such a trend is the so-called green life cycle engineering design [1, 2]. So what is a green life cycle engineering design? The socalled product life cycle means the total product time from raw material to manufacturing, assemblage, usage and finally discarding or recycling the product, as shown in Fig. 1. The addition of the concept of environmental protection in the product life cycle can be defined as the green life cycle engineering design. It is hoped that by undertaking environmental protection the influFig. 1. Consideration for green life cycle product 926 ence products have on the environment can be reduced and help return the earth to its original status: beautiful and clean. During the process, the latest two stages (product usage, discard or recycling)

have a major influence on the green life cycle of a product. On one hand, the usage of a product influences the length of the life cycle. On the other hand, discarding or recycling a product matters a lot for the environment and resources. To lengthen the life cycle of a product and make the most of resources, we need to investigate the components and subassemblies of a product. The understanding of the function and relationship among components will make it possible for engineers to work out the optimum solution. In this way, decision makers will know how to deal with components in the future (reusing, recycling, discarding or selling them to the second-hand market). Take personal computers as an example. Owing to the rapid and continuous development of technology, users will upgrade their computers after a certain period of time. Because of this, some components must be replaced even though they are not out of date. The user can deal with such a problem in a more economical way, i.e., by selling these components to a secondhand store. In this way, the user wont lose too much. Moreover, other users can purchase the product they need for a lower price. This will extend the concept of product life cycle to the maximum. At the end of the product use, disassembly can be processed where the components can be discarded, reused, recycled or sold to a store. In practical cases in Taiwan, the Environmental Protection Administration Bureau (EPAB) is in charge of the disposal of such products [3]. The user of a discarded product, for example, a vehicle, will be given an amount of money as a reward. In the disposal of personal computers, however, no suitable method is offered, thus causing difficulty in the treatment of components. No proper method or related information is provided for the users. In the past, much research in the green life cycle area was explored. For instance, Ishii proposed the life-cycle engineering design on the basis of minimum cost concept and product life cycle engineering by artificial intelligence [1]. Penev and DE Ron explored disassembly strategies through dynamic programming [4]. Pnuell and Zussman formulated the life cycle index and dealt with the AND/OR tree from the life cycle viewpoint [5]. Lee et al. discussed a multi-objective methodology for determining appropriate end-of-life options for manufactured products [6]. A numerical index of the environmental impact of a material or process the eco-indicator is adopted. After much research, Johnson and Wang [7] dealt with the disassembly tree from the profit loss margin concept synthesised from the cost matrix and profit matrix. This is the first time that product disassembly was investigated from the economic point of view. To our knowledge, the upgrade and discard problem has not been given much attention until now. This study explores the replacement problem for the endoflife products from the economic viewpoint. It is necessary to explore the replacement assessment for the following reasons: 1. Product remanufacturing can fill the new life for product or component 2. Product reuse can reduce variable costs 3. Among products, it is important to distinguish between valuable components and unvalued parts 4. To ensure the non-profit surplus is discarded or recycled 5. Research replacement analysis to promote the progress of green life cycle Obviously, the traditional approach of engineering economy (DeGarmo et al. [8]) cant support this trend now. In this study,

the minimum cost method and utility theory are used to help product owners make decisions in upgrading their products. In upgrading a product, the disassembled components will be dealt with by reuse, discarding, recycling, and selling to second-hand stores as shown in Fig. 1. In Sect. 2, the framework for the replacement evaluation of products life cycle is discussed. In Sect. 3, the related algorithm is delineated. The example of personal computers is covered in Sect. 4 to illustrate the concept. In Sect. 5, the authors make conclusions and offer future work suggestions. 2 The basic concept about replacement analysis for end-of-life product This study deals with the end-of-life product with a consideration to replace it. The proposed replacement analysis is shown in Fig. 2, where several parts of product manipulation are covered: the depreciation value determination, component database, upgrade evaluation and upgrade expense calculation. After the product configuration data is entered by a decision maker, the data is forwarded to create the bill of material (BOM) from the viewpoint of disassembly. The component database provides all the necessary information for the users to build their specifications. Determine the recycling price or depreciation value of product. After the user enters the specification data, the computer will search for the recycling price in the database. If the price cant be found, the computer will calculate the depreciation value as the recycling price from the depreciation factor. The recycling price serves as a reference for the user to make decisions in dealing with their product components reuse, selling to a store, recycling or discarding. Component disposal. After the recycling price or depreciation value is known, users need to decide how to deal with their product. They can sell it to a store for a certain amount of money, dispose of it or reuse it. Based on the users decision, the program will calculate the product salvage according to the value and disassembly cost of the components. Select upgrade items. With the product salvage at hand, the users need to select the upgrade items according to their needs in the future. Upgrade evaluation. The feasibility of upgrading is evaluated from the upgrade selection and the original facility. 927 Fig. 2. Evaluation procedure for disassembly analysis from the replacement viewpoint Suggestion report. The suggestion report lists the optimum product portfolios that not only call for the minimum upgrade cost but also meet the users requirements. If the user can accept a higher cost of upgrade, a couple of upgrade suggestions will be offered. If the user is not satisfied with the suggestions (some users may prefer a specific brand or dislike certain products), then the user can go back to the data entry part and reenter the upgrade category until the suggestion is satisfactory to him/her. 3 The disposal model of end-of-life product In this research, the decisions for the end-of-life product salvage are different because four levels, including reuse, recycling, discarding and selling to a store, were adopted to deal with the products. After the user chooses the disposal method, the precise value of product salvage will be generated. In the disassembly analysis, the functions and purchasing

price are considered. To proceed with the economic benefit analysis of product depreciation, the user needs to enter the depreciation factor. The algorithm to calculate the depreciation value is listed in Eq. 1: Xi = Mi R (1) where Xi represents the depreciation value of a specific component i, Mi represents the original price of a specific component i and R represents the depreciation factor of a specific component (the value of the depreciation factor falls in the range of [0, 1]). The calculated depreciation value is close to the product value after a period of usage time. From the viewpoint of engineering economy, for an asset with an estimated life of n years, the depreciation value that may be used with this method is R = 2/n [8]. Because the disassembly task of a product will take an amount of time, the disassembly cost should be taken into consideration. The disassembly expense is calculated by the following algorithm as listed in Eq. 2: Hi = PcostT (2) where Hi represents the disassembly cost whose value is smaller or equal to the assembly cost, Pcost represents the man power cost and T represents the disassembly time whose value is assumed to be equal to that of assembly time. The assembly time can be determined from the research result of Boothroyd et al. [9] In addition, when the user chooses to reuse a component i, the algorithm for reuse is shown in Eq. 3: Reuse = Xi Hi (3) where Reuse represents the value of product salvage, Xi represents the depreciation value, the output of Eq. 1 and Hi represents the disassembly cost, the output of Eq. 2. When the user chooses to sell it to a store, the user needs to enter the price of the component on the second-hand market. A precise value of product salvage will then be generated and proceeded with the disassembly cost as is shown in Eq. 4: Recycle = Rc Hi (4) where Recycle represents the value of product salvage, Rc represents the value of the product price on the second-hand market and Hi represents the disassembly cost, the output of Eq. 2. For recycling or discarding choices, the product is either too old or damaged and cannot be sold to a store. Therefore, the subsidy given by the government was employed in this study to calculate the value for these two choices. And because there are a few items to be recycled according to the EPABs regulations, those not recycled will be discarded. The algorithm for such product recycling is shown in Eq. 5: Disposal = Ro Hi (5) where Disposal represents the product salvage value of recycling, Ro represents the subsidy given by the government and Hi represents the disassembly cost, the output of Eq. 2. 928 Because there is no compensation for choosing to discard, only the disassembly cost is considered in the discarding choice. The algorithm is listed in Eq. 6: Donot=Hi (6) where Donot represents the product salvage value of discarding and Hn represents the disassembly cost, the output of Eq. 2. After the product is disassembled, and the parts are considered for reuse, discarding, recycling or selling to a store, the total product salvage is the summation of the salvage value of

the components by specific disposal choices. This is denoted by Eq. 7: Si = Max(ReuseRecycleDisposalDonot) (7) where Si represent the total salvage of product, Reuse represents the summation of the salvage of reusing components, Recycle represents the summation of the salvage of recycling components, Disposal represents the summation of the subsidies of components and Donot represents the summation of the salvage of discarding components. Ssum = n i Si (8) where Si represents the salvage value for component i and Ssum represents the total salvage of products. Upgrading product components can be regarded as a decisionmaking problem. Each component has a corresponding utility value for every decision maker. When a user desires a component located outside the feasible support region, it is impossible to produce a component that completely satisfies the users requirement. However, the user may have some level of satisfaction for a compromised component outside the feasible region. A replacement system should be introduced so that satisfaction levels are as great as possible. Various models for expressing users demands for products have been presented ([1012]). In this paper, we model this utility function of users value as the fuzzy membership function ([12]). An example of the utility function is shown in Fig. 3. The figure shows that for input factors, a normalisation function can be determined by its average point (X0) and steeping rate (r). These two control parameters can be modified based on the users intent. The steeping rate is related to the curve shapes and X0 corresponds to a value of 0.5 and influences the relative position of the S-shape curve. Based on the membership function, all input values can be normalised into a [0, 1] value. The logistic function is calculated by the following formula: Y = 1 1+er(xx0 ) (9) where x0 represents the average index and r represents the slope of the curve. The determination of the weights is dependent on the user. The weight value can be entered directly by the decision maker. Fig. 3. Utility function determination of Eq. 9 The Range for the value of each weight is [0,1] and their sum must equal 1. The formula n i=1 Wi = 1 must be satisfied. The total utility value is the sum of the individual utilities and is shown in Eq. 10: Utotal = n i=1 wiU. (10) 4 Illustrated example Based upon the framework in Fig. 2, the authors use personal computers as pilot examples to build the system under the environment

of Microsoft Visual Basic Version 6. The component database provides all components for the users to enter their specifications. The configuration of the PC Board, hard disk, Fig. 4. Bill of material for a personal computer 929 Component Original data Second hand price Upgrade data Price in May 2000 CPU Pentium 233 1000 K6-2 300 2,000 Main board Socket 7/AGP/PCI/ISA Same RAM 32MB DIMM Same Hard disk(HD) 4.3GB 300 8.6GB 3,500 DVD/CD-ROM 32X 32X Same Display VGA card AGP(VGA card) Same Total cost 1,300 5,500 Table 1. Illustrated example modified form Lin (1999) monitor, CPU, RAM, audio and video cards, mouse, key board, floppy disk, CD ROM, Power, and the like need to be specified and stored respectively. In the process, the PC board will be linked to the CPU because they need to be compatible with each other. Different CPUs are required for different PC boards. In this system, the user needs to enter the disposal method he or she likes, taking into account the depreciation value. The disposal methods include reuse, selling to a store, recycling, and discarding. One and only one of these choices should be made to calculate the product salvage of each component. With these data available, the user can pick one out of four specific functions: word processing, multimedia, 3D games and graphics, where the basic facility such as RAM and CPU are set up in advance. Based upon the functions the user selects and those of the original, an upgrade is necessary when the original facilities are lower than those selected by the user. Accordingly, the upgrade expense will then be calculated. Table 1 shows a practical example of the upgrade specification of personal computers. The content is obtained by the experience of experts ([13]). The prices of components have been adjusted for May 2001. The information listed in Table 1 is related to the manufacturer, product type and the price that will Fig. 5. Configuration of the personal computer serve as criteria for upgrading. Figure 4 shows the bill of material for the personal computer. Figure 5 is the interface of the input system. To figure out the product salvage, the algorithm for depreciation value will be used to calculate the present value of the computer. In calculating the depreciation, the depreciation factor, which is between 0 and 1 for each component, should be entered. The depreciation factor is up to the users evaluation. If it is entered casually, there will be some difference between the output and the real depreciation value. With the depreciation value generated, the user needs to select one disposal method from reuse, recycling, discarding and selling to a store. The disassembly cost will then be calculated. In this study, the disassembly expense is based upon the unit cost of man power: Pcost33 (a charge of NT$1,000 for 30 min ([13, 14]) and an empirical observation: the disassembly time (T) for the CPU and the hard disk is 0.5 min and 1 min, respectively. Moreover, the prices for second-hand CPUs and hard disks are NT$300 and NT$1,000, respectively (Rc in Sect. 3). Consequently, the product salvage (Rcycle) of CPU Fig. 6. Calculating for salvage value 930

Fig. 7. Selection for upgrade level and hard disk is NT$285.5 and NT$967, respectively, as shown in Fig. 6. In the example shown in Fig. 7, the user chooses word processing as the major function for upgrading. The systems output suggests that the CPU and hard disk should be replaced. From Eq. 8 mentioned in Sect. 3, the upgrade expense amounts to NT$4249.5. Compared with the experts opinion in Table 1, it will cost NT$5,500 to upgrade the components according to PC Magazine. Subtracting the money earned from selling the CPU and hard disk to a store, which is NT$1,300, the upgrade cost is 5, 5001, 300 = 4, 200. Considering the disassembly charge, Fig. 10. Comparison between the original and new PC Fig. 8. Calculating the utility value for the personal computer Fig. 9. Upgraded suggestion report 931 which is NT$49.5 (1.5 min * 33 = 49.5), the total upgrade expense is NT$4,249.5. Therefore, the authors suggestion is not only to include the upgrade cost but also to include the recycling consideration. The upgrade level of the major components of a personal computer is like the S-shape curve illustrated in Eq. 9. The utility curve of the CPU, RAM and VGA card is shown in Fig. 8. The total utility value is delineated in Eq. 10. Finally, we can compare the portfolio between the original and the new product. The suggestion report is shown in Figures 9 and 10. With the complete database set up, the user will be able to determine the facility and expense necessary to upgrade without expert knowledge. 5 Conclusions This study attempted to establish an economic replacement analysis model for general products. This model helps a user determine the best method to use when upgrading a product such as a personal computer. In addition to solving the upgrading problem, the model informs the user about product salvage possibilities so that the user can decide whether it is suitable to upgrade the computer. That is to say, it not only helps solve the upgrade problem but also meets the requirements of the PC user. Because the design and development of products is influenced by the external environment and time factors, it is necessary to update the database regularly. A network version of such models should be established in the near future so that the user can access the program through a network. Manufacturers as well as second-hand store keepers can also update the related information when necessary. This will guarantee that the suggested report is more precise. References 1. Ishii K (1995) Life-cycle engineering design. Trans ASME 117:4247 2. Gngr A, Gupta SM (1999) Issues in environmentally conscious manufacturing and product recovery: a survey. Comput Ind Eng 36:811853 3. Environmental Protection Administration Government of the Republic of China, http://www.epa.gov.tw. 4. Penev KD, De Ron AJ (1996) Determination of a disassembly strategy. Int J Prod Res 34(2):495506 5. Pnuell Y, Zussman E (1997) Evaluating the end-of-life value of a product and improving it by redesign. Int J Prod Res 35(4):921942 6. Lee SG, Lye SW, Khoo MK (2001) A Multi-objective methodology for evaluating product End-Of-Life options and disassembly. Int J Adv

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