Maintenance, reliability and performance optimization for remanufacturing and sustainability

本研究计划旨在研究再制造、更新或二手物品的维修、可靠性和性能优化问题。再制造，即通过拆卸、清洁、修理和更换零件以及重新组装，将使用过的或寿命终止/使用结束的产品恢复到新的状态的过程，已被证明对制造商和消费者都具有经济和环境上的吸引力。再制造的可行性在很大程度上取决于退回产品的数量和质量。这些回收产品的退化状况和状态影响了从这些产品中拆卸回收的部件的可靠性和成品率。在再制造过程中使用这些部件还需要进行升级活动和翻新，这可能会增加生产的再制造二手产品的成本。此外，制造商往往提供慷慨的保修范围，以吸引消费者。所有这些物流、生产、销售和支持决策的环境和成本影响都很高，因此需要开发数学模型来分析这些问题，并在决策过程中告知再制造商和消费者。

This research program proposes to investigate the maintenance, reliability and performance optimization issues for remanufactured, refreshed or second-hand items. Remanufacturing, the process of restoring used or end-of-life/end-of-use products to like-new conditions by disassembly, cleaning, repairing and replacing parts, and reassembly, has proven to be attractive economically and environmentally for both manufacturers and consumers. The viability of remanufacturing is heavily conditioned by the quantity and quality of the returned products. The condition and state of degradation of these returned products affect the reliability and yield rates of the components recovered by disassembly from these products. Using these parts in the remanufacturing process also requires upgrading activities and reconditioning that can increase the cost of the remanufactured second-hand products produced. Moreover, manufacturers tend to offer generous warranty coverage in order to attract consumers. The environmental and cost implications of all these logistics, production, sales and support decisions are high and therefore require the development of mathematical models to analyze these problems and inform remanufacturers and the consumer in their decision-making process. The long-term goals of this research program are to develop a comprehensive and integrated framework of reliability, safety, quality and maintenance models and tools for decision making in the context of sustainable manufacturing and reverse logistics. The short-term objectives to be addressed are to develop closed-loop supply chain models integrating disassembly, parts reliability and reconditioning factors to support efficient remanufacturing activities, develop mixing strategies of new and reconditioned parts to enable the remanufacturing of durable second-hand products, develop new maintenance, reliability improvement models and warranty models to optimize the performance of refreshed systems. The outcomes are expected to be the advancement of knowledge with the publication of the models to be developed, training of highly qualified graduate students and environmentally conscious engineers, and benefit the Canadian companies working in the areas of reverse logistics and remanufacturing.