The current trend of depletion of natural resources due to an ever-increasing number of consumer goods manufactured has led to an increase in the quantity ofused and outdated products discarded. From an environmental point ofview, it is not only desirable to disassemble, reuse, remanufacture and/or recycle the discarded products, in many cases it can also be economically justified. This situation being the motive, in recent years there have been several studies reported on disassembly, remanufacturing and/or recycling environments. Since "environmentally conscious manufacturing" is a relatively new concept that brings new costs and profits into consideration, its analysis cannot be provided by readily available techniques. This paper presents a quantitative methodology to determine the allowable tolerance limits of planned/unplanned inventory in a remanufacturing supply chain environment based on the decision-maker's unique preferences. To this end, an integer goal-programming model that provides a unique solution for the allowable inventoiy level is presented. The objective of the supply-chain model is to determine the number of a variety of components to be kept in the inventoiy while economically fulfilling the demand of a multitude of components, and yet have an environmentally benign policy of minimizing waste generation. A numerical example is presented to illustrate the methodology.

Date Published: 9 February 2001
PDF: 12 pages
Proc. SPIE 4193, Environmentally Conscious Manufacturing, (9 February 2001); doi: 10.1117/12.417260

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 4193:
Environmentally Conscious Manufacturing
Surendra M. Gupta, Editor(s)