Journal of Cleaner Production 19 (2011) 1939e1945

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Journal of Cleaner Production

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Development of multi-criteria decision making model for remanufacturing

technology portfolio selection
Zhigang Jiang a, *, Hua Zhang a, John W. Sutherland b
a
College of Machinery and Automation, Wuhan University of Science & Technology, Wuhan 430081, China
b
Division of Environmental and Ecological Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907, USA

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Remanufacturing represents a business opportunity and in many cases a means to promote environ-
Received 3 March 2011 mental sustainability. To help enterprises economically and effectively implement remanufacturing,
Received in revised form a multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) model for selecting remanufacturing technology is developed.
8 July 2011
The model considers remanufacturing technology portfolios. The enterprise benefits associated with
Accepted 9 July 2011
Available online 20 July 2011
each portfolio, including economic and environmental benefits, are evaluated using six main criteria:
cost, quality, time, service, resource consumption, and environmental impact. In addition, the synergies
among the different types of technologies for each remanufacturing technology portfolio are also
Keywords:
Remanufacturing technology
considered. The pair-wise comparison approach of Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is employed for
Multi-criteria decision making remanufacturing technology portfolio selection. An illustrative example is provided to lend insights into
Environmental performance the application of this methodology.
Analytical hierarchy process Ó 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction different sources of cores, and explored how to take-back used

The growing concern for environmental protection and over-
consumption of resources has stimulated many new activities for
addressing the environmental challenges created by the increasing
consumption of industrial products (Jiang et al., 2011). Moreover,
sustainability will only be possible with closed-cycle systems in
which material resources are recovered from the waste stream at
the end-of-life (EOL) of a product (Heese et al., 2005). Remanu-
facturing is an industrial process that reuses resources by means of
recovery, disassembly, cleaning, inspection, and processing a used
product (Zhu et al., 2001). Kerr and Ryan (2001) suggest that
remanufacturing is an “eco-efficient” approach and thus merits
significant attention from researchers.
Remanufacturing applies a manufacturing process to put a worn
core or product back into an “as new” condition. While not
necessarily a technical engineering issue, the success of a remanu-
facturing business is very dependent on the acquisition of high
quality used products or cores in order to satisfy the demand for
remanufactured products. Geyer and Jackson (2004) elaborated on
how to overcome obstacles within the reverse supply chain in order
to ensure a steady supply of cores. Ostlin et al. (2008) identified
* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: jzg100@163.com (Z. Jiang).
products for remanufacturing from customeresupplier relation-
ships perspective. Korchi and Millet (2011) presented a detailed
practical framework for designing the reverse logistics channel for
supplying reusable used modules to the production chain. With the
used products or cores available, another important decision in
remanufacturing is therefore which of the available cores should be
remanufactured. Teunter et al. (2011) presented a decision-making
model for acquisition and remanufacturing for situations with
more than two discrete quality classes. Of course, the availability
and grading of cores with different qualities provides a foundation
for remanufacturing production. Once the acquisition and rema-
nufacturing decisions have been made, the performance of the
remanufacturing facility is of significant to restore the cores.
When considering a change to a manufacturing or remanu-
facturing facility, the concept of “planning level” is often employed
to describe the type or scope of decisions that must be made. At the
lowest planning level is operation planning. Operation plans are
focused on selecting the conditions under which a process or
operation will be performed. Ritchey et al. (2005) suggested
a framework to evaluate the economic viability of remanufacturing
operations. To address system uncertainties and incomplete infor-
mation in remanufacturing operation planning, Cao et al. (2010)
presented a two-phase decision-making model based on assess-
ments from experts and fuzzy regression theory. Pusavec et al.
(2010) provided a perspective on the role of machining

0959-6526/$ e see front matter Ó 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2011.07.010
1940 Z. Jiang et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 19 (2011) 1939e1945
technology in sustainable development with a comparative case
study of life cycle assessment for alternative machining operations.
The planning level above operation planning is process planning.
Process plans address the specific operations and equipment and
the order in which the operations will be performed to realize
a given component. Zuidwijk and Krikke (2008) studied how
industry should improve product recovery through innovations in
used product recovery technologies. Gehin et al. (2008) developed
a tool called Repro that provides appropriate EOL strategies to
designers in the early design stage. Xanthopoulos and Iakovou
(2009) proposed a mixed integer linear programming model to
determine the optimum degree to which a product should dis-
assembled for different types of EOL products. Lee et al. (2010)
presented a hierarchical decision model for EOL decision making
and disassembly planning. At the highest planning level is
production planning. Production plans concentrate on facility level
decisions such as job sequencing, inventory management, and
resource management. Sundin and Bras (2005) introduced the
concept of “Functional Sales” to emphasize technical and economic
aspects of remanufacturing, and analyzed how functional sales can
be both environmentally and economically beneficial through
remanufacturing. Kim et al. (2006) proposed a general framework
for remanufacturing environment and a mixed integer program-
ming model to maximize the total cost savings by finding the
optimal quantity of parts to be processed at each remanufacturing
facilities, and the number of parts to purchase from subcontractors.
Ostlin et al. (2009) addressed the effects of balancing supply and
demand in the remanufacturing industry, providing remanufac-
tured products in an effective way during the life cycle of products.
Subramoniam et al. (2010) presented a remanufacturing decision-
making framework for suppliers with a sustainability focus.
Sutherland et al. (2010) developed a cost model for determining
optimal size of a diesel engine remanufacturing facility.
All of the aforementioned planning levels relate to the
manufacturing or realization of products/components/features. Yet
another type of planning e technology planning e is focused on
securing the processing equipment and other functionalities (e.g.,
robot or specialized tooling) required to undertake (or enhance the
capabilities of) manufacturing (or remanufacturing). Technology
planning must occur far in advance of operation, process, or
production planning, and anticipate the costs and potential benefits
of any new equipment/functionality. Such benefits may include
access to new markets, improved competitiveness, and enhanced
corporate image.
The development of an effective technology plan for remanu-
facturing generally requires decision support methods and tools that
can consider how various equipment/functionality alternatives
influence a range of performance measures. With respect to rema-
nufacturing, performance measures of interest include cost, cycle
time, energy consumption, and environmental emission. A method
for technology planning must be capable of considering multiple
criteria; such multiple criteria serve to increase the dimensionality of
the problem. This paper presents a new MCDM (multiple criteria
decision making) model for selecting a set of remanufacturing
technologies (a technology portfolio). The model employs a pair-wise
comparison approach to characterize the relative importance of
different performance criteria, and assigns importance weightings to
these criteria by the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). Following the
presentation of the proposed method for technology planning, the
method is demonstrated via a valve manufacturing example.
2. Background
Many companies have successfully adopted remanufacturing as
a business strategy. Not only does remanufacturing often represent
a profitable opportunity, it also can provide an excellent mecha-
nism to reduce the environmental impact of end-of-use-products
(Wang and Cheng, 2011, and Milanez and Buhrs, 2009). This
paper considers a scenario in which a manufacturing company
desires to introduce (or expand) a remanufacturing activity. Such
a remanufacturing activity requires a system to recover used
products or cores, and then process them through a series of
remanufacturing operations, before they may be sold as remanu-
factured products. For such a scenario, remanufacturing technology
planning is of special relevance, since the technologies/function-
alities that are added to the company will have a large effect on the
competitiveness of the organization.
2.1. Remanufacturing system
When considering a remanufacturing activity that exists within
the walls of a factory, a generic remanufacturing system framework
may be adopted that divides the remanufacturing system into five
different phases: pre-disassembly, disassembly, processing,
assembly, and post-assembly (Sundin, 2004). These phases are
shown in Fig. 1, and are discussed below.
The generic remanufacturing system begins with a core (or used
product). A principal purpose of the first phase of the system (pre-
disassembly phase) is to decide on what option should be pursued
with respect to a core, e.g., remanufacture the core or recycle the
core for its material value. During the pre-disassembly phase, the
core is evaluated for its potential to be successfully further utilized
in the remanufacturing system. If it is determined that the core and/
or its components cannot be utilized, the core then exits the system
for material recycling. Cores that successfully complete the pre-
disassembly phase may be placed into a core inventory.
The disassembly phase draws used products from the core
inventory as input. The main function of the disassembly phase is to
separate and evaluate the components that make up the cores. In
disassembly, some cores may be completely disassembled to
produce individual components, while others may undergo only
partial disassembly. Following the disassembly phase, those
components or modules that can be used by the processing or
assembly phases of the remanufacturing system are placed into the
parts inventory. Some of these inventoried parts may require pro-
cessing and others may not. Modules/components that cannot be
employed are recycled. Throughout the pre-disassembly, disas-
sembly, and processing phases a wide range of cleaning and
inspection operations are performed. Cleaning operations may be
performed on whole cores, modules, and individual components,
and include such operations as sandblasting, steel brushing, and
washing with chemical and aqueous baths.
The processing phase aims to improve the quality of a compo-
nent or module through one or more manufacturing operations.
This quality level may be less than the original quality of the item,
equal to the original quality, or better than the original quality; this
is a decision of the company. The processing phase can utilize
a variety of different operations, e.g., material addition (welding,
Recycle
scrap
Core
Inventory
Pre-Disassembly 1 Disassembly 2 Processing 3 Recycle
Recycle Parts
Inventory
Assembly Post-Assembly
Fig. 1. Remanufacturing system.
 Z. Jiang et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 19 (2011) 1939e1945
thermal spraying, etc.), material removal (machining, laser cutting,
etc.), and surface treating (heat treating, anodizing, etc.). The
specific operations or processes used depend on the type of
components to be processed. If it is determined that the compo-
nents are not processable, they are removed from the system for
material recycling.
In the assembly phase, components/modules are brought
together to form a finished product. Assembly can be done with
components/modules that are i) used, but not acted on by the
processing phase, ii) used and processed, or iii) new. The assembly
of components is often done with power tools and assembly
equipment as in new product assembly. Following the assembly
phase, the final testing of the product is executed in the post-
assembly phase. This phase ensures that the remanufactured
product is at the desired quality level. Other post-assembly oper-
ations can include packaging and shipping to send the remanu-
factured product to the customer.
2.2. Remanufacturing technology portfolio selection procedure
The creation of any new remanufacturing system (or the
enhancement of an existing system) requires an overarching goal,
e.g., “we want to remanufacture fuel pumps.” Once the system goal
is defined, then goals must be specified for each phase of the
remanufacturing system, e.g., “the processing phase will repair
damage to produce like-new components.” Of all the phases in the
remanufacturing system, the processing phase is perhaps the most
important since this is the phase where components and modules
are actually restored. The success of the processing phase is highly
dependent on the manufacturing operations employed, and the
equipment utilized to perform the operations. Thus, the success of
a remanufacturing system hinges on the characteristics and capa-
bilities of the equipment used for processing. In this paper, deci-
sions relating to the selection of equipment that will be utilized to
perform the operations associated with the processing phase are
termed technology planning.
The development of a remanufacturing system requires that
decisions be made for three highly coupled issues: restoration
planning, process planning, and technology planning. With resto-
ration planning, the types of component/module damage that will
be repaired by the remanufacturing operation must be determined.
The process plan describes the specific operations that will be
performed, the conditions for these operations, and the order of the
operations. The efficacy with which damage can be rectified greatly
depends on the process plan established to repair each defect/fault,
and the successes of the operations within the process plan are in
turn, very dependent on the equipment/technology used to
perform each operation (a set of such equipment may be referred to
as a technology portfolio). In terms of the chronology in which
these planning activities are performed, restoration planning is
followed by process planning and then by technology planning.
Once the details of the technology plan have been defined, the
performance of this phase of the remanufacturing system can be
evaluated; this evaluation may drive changes within the tech-
nology, process, and/or restoration plans.
In this paper, it is assumed that for a given component, resto-
ration and process plans have been developed, and it is now of
interest to establish a technology plan (technology portfolio). We
propose a new method for remanufacturing technology portfolio
selection. This method consists of three key steps:
1. Generate technology alternatives. In this step, a set of process
technologies/functionalities for performing each operation,
and thus repairing faults, should be recommended. For
example, excessive wear in a given location can be rectified
1941
through a process plan that involves material addition and
material removal. There are a variety of technologies such as
arc welding technology and thermal spraying technology that
can perform the material addition operation. Cylindrical
grinding technology and OD (outside diameter) turning tech-
nology represent alternatives to execute a material removal
operation. Therefore, a variety of technology portfolio alter-
natives may be formed from the combinations of the material
addition and material removal operations, e.g., arc welding and
OD turning, or thermal spraying and cylindrical grinding.
2. Criteria identification. In order to evaluate the manufacturing
performance for each of the portfolio alternatives identified in
the previous step, criteria to characterize the performance
must be identified. In this paper we will consider both
economic and environmental criteria. Then, quantitative
descriptions must be developed that deal with criteria and
measures with widely disparate units.
3. Find the best alternatives. In this step, a set of process tech-
nologies/functionalities must be selected to achieve the goals
of the process plan. That is to say, a technology portfolio must
be chosen that considers the economic and environmental
criteria identified above; the outcome of this multiple criteria
decision making process should be the best set of technologies
(technology portfolio). The selection process should consider
how the different technologies within a portfolio interact with
one another.
2.3. Decision-making criteria
The performance of the remanufacturing system can be evalu-
ated by a variety of different criteria. The criteria adopted for this
work are cost, quality, time, and service. Recently, environmental
performance has emerged as an important new dimension of
system performance (Jimenez and Lorente, 2001). Environmental
performance can be assessed through a variety of means; in this
paper two criteria are employed: resource consumption and
process emission (Jiang and Zhang, 2008, and Simon, 2010). Thus,
in the present research, six criteria will be utilized to evaluate
technology alternatives. In general, a criterion represents a general
area of performance, and specific measures (factors) must be
defined for each criterion to quantify the performance. This hier-
archy (performanceecriteriaemeasures) is shown in Fig. 2.
2.4. Multiple criteria decision making (MCDM)
In the formulation of a multiple criteria decision making
problem, a very common approach is to combine different
measures into a single measure using a weighting scheme. Such
a weighting scheme can be difficult to develop since measures
often have widely disparate units (e.g., minutes, dollars, and kilo-
grams); moreover, the relative importance of the decision criteria
may differ among decision makers. Appropriate weights for
different criteria may be obtained by a variety of techniques, one of
which is the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP).
At the coarsest level, the hierarchy shown in Fig. 2 has a single
goal: characterize the performance of the remanufacturing system.
At the next level, performance is broken out into criteria. At the
lowest level, performance within each criterion is described by
specific measures. It is at this level where performance can be
evaluated for each technology alternative. During the technology
planning stage information is often incomplete, of unknown
accuracy, lacking in precision, and based on multiple assumptions;
thus, the values obtained for each measure will be subject to
significant uncertainty. For example, when the equipment cost is to
1942 Z. Jiang et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 19 (2011) 1939e1945

Cycle time

Time

Remanufacturing time

Equipment cost

Cost Technology alternative 1

Tooling cost

Capability

Quality

Reliability ……
Performance of
remanufacturing system
Frequency of maintenance

Service

Frequency of training

Energy efficiency Technology alternativen

Resource
consumption
Amount of raw material

Amount of solid waste

Process
emission
Amount of liquid waste

Fig. 2. Candidate measures of six decision-making criteria.

be evaluated for a given technology alternative, the value will likely
depend on the supplier, extra peripherals and tooling, number
ordered, shipping, delivery date, maintenance/warranty agree-
ments, etc.; given the underlying uncertainties, assigning a specific
monetary value to the equipment cost may be both difficult and
misleading. With this in mind, it is proposed to employ a 10-point
Likert scale for each measure. Each technology alternative will be
graded in terms of every measure using this scale. The 10-point
Likert scale ranges from 1 to 10, with larger numbers indicating
better performance, and smaller numbers indicating poorer
performance.
It is assumed that the total number of candidate technology
alternatives is n, with the set of n alternatives expressed by the
vector T ¼ (t1, t2, ., tn), where ti contains an alphanumeric
description of the ith alternative. Of course, each technology
alternative in T may be selected or unselected for the portfolio. This
binary state, of selection or unselection, can be described by
a second vector X, where its components define the “selection
state” for each element of T ¼ (t1, t2, ., tn):


1; if ti is selected
xi ¼ (1)
0; if ti is unselected

As elements within the X vector are changed, different tech-

3. MCDM model for remanufacturing technology portfolio
selection
Previous sections have described the challenge of remanu-
facturing technology planning, with a specific focus placed on
processing. Criteria have been identified for which it is desired to
select technology alternatives. Candidate measures for each crite-
rion of interest have also been identified. Given that technology
planning often occurs well before sufficient detail exists to
precisely evaluate technology alternatives, a 10-point Likert scale
has been introduced to grade each alternative. The Analytic Hier-
archy Process (AHP) has been proposed as a method to distill
measures associated with widely different criteria into a single
measure. AHP allows a decision-maker to value the decision criteria
differently via criteria weights. The specific steps in this MCDM
process are described in more detail below.
3.1. Problem description
The problem of crafting a remanufacturing technology portfolio
can be described as follows. There are a set of candidate technol-
ogies that an enterprise is considering to implement to establish or
expand its remanufacturing activity. Owing to constraints on
financial capital, human resources, etc. only several technologies
within the set can be adopted (a remanufacturing technology
portfolio).
nology portfolios are realized. Given that there are n binary
elements in X, 2n portfolios are possible. The decision-making
problem is to find the vector X that maximizes economic and
environmental benefits.
3.2. Model development
The purpose of remanufacturing technology portfolio planning
is to maximize the total benefits of the portfolio, where these
benefits consist of the singular benefits of technologies, as well as
their synergistic benefits. Before attention can be directed at
finding the elements of X that maximize the benefit, U, values for
the singular and synergistic technology benefits of a given portfolio
must be determined. Of course, any benefit must be assessed in
terms of the criteria/measures established in the previous section.
And, as has been noted, the aggregation of these criteria/measures
into a single measure requires a weighting scheme.
3.2.1. Application of AHP
Appropriate weights for different criteria/measures may be
obtained by a variety of techniques, one of which is the Analytical
Hierarchy Process (AHP). The AHP method is applied in situations
when a hierarchy of objectives exists (Fig. 2 showed this hierarchy
for the present case). AHP utilizes pair-wise comparisons for a set of
criteria to judge the relative importance of one criterion to another.
AHP combines the information from these comparisons to establish
 Z. Jiang et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 19 (2011) 1939e1945 1943

a weight for each criterion. AHP may also be applied to each jth criterion (bk ¼ 0.5 for all j and k), and uik is the value for the kth
criterion to develop weights for each measure. measure for the jth criterion. The following conditions must be met
P P2
In assessing the relative importance of one criterion to another, for the weights 6j ¼ 1 aj ¼ 1 and k ¼ 1 bk ¼ 1.
most often AHP uses a scale from “1e9” (Saaty, 2001). If the two
criteria are equally important then, the relative importance is 3.2.3. Synergistic technology benefits
assigned a value of 1. If criterion j is twice as important as criterion i, A synergistic technology benefit indicates that the effect of
then the relative importance, aij, is assigned a value of 2.0. If adding a specific technology to a portfolio depends on which other
criterion j has one-fifth the importance of criterion i, then aij is set technologies are present in the portfolio (Zhu et al., 2004). Bilat-
equal to 0.2. The relative importance of every combination of eral synergistic benefits can be characterized through a synergy
criteria then forms the pair-wise comparison matrix, A: matrix S ¼ jsij j, as expressed in Eq. (7). In the synergy matrix,
2 3 element sij represents the degree to which technology j contrib-
a11 a12 a13 / a1n utes to technology i, where sij lies on the interval between 1 and
6 a21 a22 a23 / a2n 7 1 (by definition, sii ¼ 0). A negative value for sij indicates that
  6 7
A ¼ aij ¼ 6
6 a31 a32 a33 / a3n 7
7 (2) technologies i and j are in conflict with one another. The ith row in
4 « « « 1 « 5 S provides the synergistic contributions all the technologies to the
an1 an2 an3 / ann ith technology.
It is to be noted that if criterion j is twice as important as
2 3
criterion i (aij ¼ 2.0) then criterion i will be half as important as s11 / s
criterion j (aji ¼ 0.5). In other words, S ¼ 4 « / « 5 (7)
1 sn1 / snn
aij ¼ (3)
aji
To calculate the collective synergistic benefits for all the
In general, when a decision-maker forms matrix A, they are technologies present in a portfolio, it should be noted that the
likely to create some inconsistencies, i.e., not every element of the values in the synergy matrix are fractions. For example, if
matrix will satisfy the condition of Eq. (4). s12 ¼ 0.15, this indicates that the presence of technology 2 in the
portfolio will improve the performance of technology 1 by 15%.
aij ¼ aik $akj ; (4) With this in mind, the synergistic benefit associated with the ith
where i, j, and k range from 1 to n. technology is:
Saaty (1994) provides a consistency test that can be utilized to
X
n
judge whether the decision-maker should improve their consis- si ¼ u i xj sij : (8)
tency before proceeding. j¼1
Once matrix A has been established, numerical weights can be
determined for each criterion using the geometric mean method 3.2.4. Total benefits of a remanufacturing technology portfolio
(Barfod, 2006): With the identification of singular and synergistic technology
vffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi vffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi benefits, the total benefit of a remanufacturing technology portfolio
uY X
n u Y
u n u n can be expressed as:
wi ¼ t aij t aij ; ði; j ¼ 1; 2; .; nÞ;
n n
(5)
j i¼1 j1 X
n
U ¼ xi ðui þ si Þ: (9)
where, the sum of weights must equal 1. An eigenvector method is i¼1
also available to find the weights (Ishizaka, 2004).
It is desired to achieve maximum total benefit by selecting
technologies to form a portfolio. Of course this selection process is
3.2.2. Singular technology benefits
often subject to funding availability and other considerations.
With weights now available, the singular benefit ui of each
technology alternative can be obtained by a weighted average of
4. Illustrative example
measures, with each individual measure based on the 10-point
Likert scale mentioned above. For the criteria and measures
Consider a company that manufactures valve stems for power
shown in Fig. 2, the singular benefit of each candidate technology
plants and process industry applications. As an element of a valve,
alternative can be expressed as:
these stems are damaged and worn by gas, liquid, fluidized solids,
X
6 X
2
and slurries. The process of remanufacturing worn valves has made
ui ¼ aj bk ujk (6)
a number of used valve stems available, and the company wished to
j¼1 k¼1
explore the concept of remanufacturing the valve stems. The used
where, aj is the weight of jth criterion (e.g., cost, time, quality, or valve stems are observed to have such faults as wear, nick, dent, and
service), bk is the weight of kth measure (e.g., cycle time) within the corrosion, as shown in Table 1. The table also shows the

Table 1
Likely faults and candidate remanufacturing technology.

Fault Remanufacturing operations required Technology alternatives

Wear Additive operation Thermal spraying or arc welding
Machining operation Grinding or turning
Nicks and dents Additive operation Arc welding or thermal spraying
Machining operation Turning or grinding
Corrosion Machining operation Grinding or turning
Additive operation Thermal spraying or arc welding
Machining operation Grinding or turning
1944 Z. Jiang et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 19 (2011) 1939e1945

Table 2 Table 4
Scores and weights of the measures. Implementation costs (10,000 s RMB).

Criterion Weight Measure Weight Score Alternative t1 t2 t3 t4

aj bk Implementation cost 25 25 30 25
t1 t2 t3 t4
Time (T) 0.047 Cycle time 0.500 4 4 5 6
Remanufacturing time 0.500 5 5 5 6
Quality (Q) 0.268 Capability 0.500 5 6 5 6
consistency. In addition, since each criterion had two equally
Reliability 0.500 5 7 5 6 important measures, the weight that was ultimately assigned to
Cost (C) 0.084 Equipment cost 0.500 6 4 6 3 a measure was the product of one-half and the weight of the cor-
Tooling cost 0.500 6 5 6 7 responding criterion. The weights for the measures within each
Service (S) 0.129 Frequency of 0.500 6 5 8 8
criterion (equal to 0.5) are also shown in Table 2. With the weights
maintenance
Frequency of training 0.500 5 6 7 6 available, a score (using the 10-point Likert scale) for each measure
Process emission (E) 0.403 Amount of solid waste 0.500 7 6 7 6 was developed based on discussions with company personnel;
Amount of liquid waste 0.500 7 6 6 6 these are shown in Table 2. Then the singular benefit of each
Resource 0.068 Energy efficiency 0.500 6 8 6 5 remanufacturing technology was calculated using Eq. (6):
consumption (R) Amount of raw 0.500 8 6 7 6
material consumption
u1 ¼ 6.062, u2 ¼ 5.667, u3 ¼ 6.108, u4 ¼ 6.408.
In addition, to singular technology benefits, synergistic tech-
nology effects also needed to be addressed. The synergy matrix
remanufacturing operations needed to rectify the faults, and the shown in Table 3 was developed based on interactions with
technology alternatives for performing these operations. company personnel. It may be observed that matrix elements on
The company already had some technology in place, in partic- the main diagonal are zero; these elements are actually associated
ular, equipment for turning and milling. It was desired to provide with singular benefits which addressed by the values for u1, u2, u3,
guidance to the company on which pieces of equipment should be and u4.
secured (to complement their existing manufacturing technolo- Since in this case, all the singular and synergistic benefits are
gies) so that they could begin remanufacturing. The remanu- positive, there are no deleterious consequences associated with
facturing technology alternatives included: (1) t1 e buy a new CNC including extra technologies in the portfolio (negative values in the
grinding machine (Weihai Teiying, CLM10); (2) t2 e upgrade synergy matrix would mean that benefit is lost when two specific
turning capabilities of an existing lathe (Yancheng Yuefei, C6136), technologies appear in the portfolio together). In other words, in
e.g., retrofit with a power feed, digital readout of position, and NC this case it was desirable to include as many technologies as
features; (3) t3 e purchase thermal spraying equipment (Beijing possible. However, only 800,000 RMB in funds were available to
CMD Surface Technology Equipment Co., CMD-AS1620); and (4) secure the technology alternatives, and the costs for implementing
t4 e procure arc welding equipment (Guangzhou Durowelder, ZX7- each alternative is shown in Table 4. Based on the available funding
200A). With the four technology alternatives specified, vector and the implementation costs shown in Table 4, only three tech-
T ¼ (t1, t2, t3, t4) was defined. Attention then shifted to identifying nologies may be included in the portfolio. Thus, the possible
the priorities of the decision-maker. candidate technology portfolios were: (1,1,1,0), (1,1,0,1), (1,0,1,1),
Based on discussions with key personnel in the company, the and (0,1,1,1).
pair-wise comparison matrix, A, for the criteria identified in Fig. 2 Equations (8) and (9) may be employed to find the total benefit
was constructed: for each possible portfolio; these benefits are shown in Table 5. As is
evident from the table, the portfolio (1,1,0,1) provides the
maximum total benefit, that is, technology alternatives t1 (CNC
grinding), t2 (lathe upgrade) and t4 (arc welding) selected. An
examination of Table 5 indicates that if the synergies were not
considered, the selected technology portfolio would be the one
with the greatest singular benefit: (1,0,1,1) e no lathe upgrade and
the addition of thermal spraying.
When the above results were shared with the valve plant
management a discussion ensued which provided considerable
insight. It turns out the remanufacturing capability would have
actually been the most enhanced with portfolio (1,0,1,1) that has
both thermal spraying and arc welding technologies, but no lathe
upgrade. However, the maximum total benefit is also achieved with
the lowest-cost portfolio (1,1,0,1). From a manufacturing enterprise
Calculating the largest eigenvalue of matrix A and its corre- perspective, it is better to upgrade the lathe and not include
sponding eigenvectors, the weights for the six different criteria thermal spraying since such an approach benefits both remanu-
can be obtained, as shown is Table 2. The consistency index facturing and manufacturing operations. Moreover, most remanu-
CR ¼ 0.0479 < 0.10, so this pair-wise comparison matrix owns good facturing processes can be completed using arc welding

Table 3
Synergy matrix. Table 5
Benefits for each portfolio.
Technology j
Portfolio Singular Synergistic Total Portfolio cost
t1 t2 t3 t4 benefit benefit benefit (10,000 s RMB)
Technology i t1 0.000 0.200 0.120 0.200 (1,1,1,0) 17.837 2.916 20.753 80
t2 0.056 0.000 0.100 0.150 (1,1,0,1) 18.137 4.233 22.37 75
t3 0.015 0.025 0.000 0.000 (1,0,1,1) 18.578 2.256 20.834 80
t4 0.035 0.065 0.000 0.000 (0,1,1,1) 18.183 1.986 20.169 80
 Z. Jiang et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 19 (2011) 1939e1945
technology. Of course, this subtle difference emphasizes the
importance of considering synergistic effects.
5. Summary and conclusions
A new method for remanufacturing technology planning has
been presented that considers economic and environmental
criteria. The multi-criteria decision-making method considers both
the singular and synergistic benefits of different technology alter-
natives. The analytic hierarchy process is employed not only to
frame the problem, but also to establish weights for various criteria
and measures of interest. An illustrative example is provided to
demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method in estab-
lishing a technology portfolio for a remanufacturing system.
The valve plant example demonstrates the importance of
considering the synergistic effects of technologies. In the absence of
synergistic effects, a technology portfolio would be created that
does not consider the overall enterprise benefit. In general, it may
be concluded, that technologies that produce significant synergistic
benefits may be more attractive than a technology with high
singular benefit.
Acknowledgements
The work described in this paper was supported by the National
Natural Science Foundation of China, Grant No. 70971102 and
Education Department Fund of Hubei (Grant Nos. Q20091115 and
T201102), and Project 2008TD03 & A0903 supported by Science
Foundation of Wuhan University of Science and Technology. These
financial contributions are gratefully acknowledged.
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