Collaborative Research: Concurrent Design Integration of Products and Remanufacturing Processes for Sustainability and Life Cycle Resilience

再制造是回收产品在制造过程中投入的价值，从而减少产品对环境影响的重要策略。然而，目前很少有产品是为再制造而设计的，而且很少有来自再制造的反馈被用来改进产品设计。传统上，设计和设计后的再制造决策是分开做出的，这导致了产品在整个生命周期中的性能不是最优的。目前迫切需要新的设计理论和工具来促进设计与再制造的并行决策。由该奖项资助的研究试图通过开发一个新的产品设计平台来满足这样的需求，该平台由预测建模、机器学习和设计优化方面的几项技术创新实现，用于产品的并行设计集成和多生命周期产品的再制造过程，以增强可持续性和弹性。这些技术创新将解决再制造中的关键挑战，包括维修政策分析、报废产品损伤检测、再制造检验、最佳维修政策以及设计和再制造集成。平台验证将通过与工业合作伙伴合作进行农业车辆液压歧管设计应用。这项研究将把新产生的知识纳入教育和推广活动，强调扩大代表性不足的群体对可持续设计科学的参与。本课题的研究目标是创建一个新的产品设计平台，用于设计多生命周期产品，同时考虑其再制造过程。为了弥补目前产品设计和产品再制造过程中单独考虑的两个决策问题之间的差距，本研究将分为三个研究任务：(1)再制造弹性量化与分配，首次推导出再制造弹性测度，并提出一个新的顶层弹性分配问题；(2)面向可修复性的再制造协同设计，为零部件的详细设计及其再制造修复策略制定新的底层再制造协同设计问题；(3)再制造检验流程设计，这将为自动化再制造检验系统创造一种新的底层设计方法。如果成功，本研究将为从传统的产品设计和报废考虑的单独决策方法向并行产品设计和再制造过程集成的整体框架的转变奠定重要的基础。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Remanufacturing serves as an important strategy to salvage the value put into a product during manufacturing therefore reducing the environmental impact of the product. However, few products are currently designed for remanufacturing and further there is rarely any feedback from remanufacturing being used to improve product designs. Design and post-design remanufacturing decisions have traditionally been made separately, leading to suboptimal performance over the product’s life cycle. There is an urgent need of new design theory and tools to facilitate concurrent decision making considering both design and remanufacturing. Research funded by this award attempts to addresses such a need by developing a new product design platform, enabled by several technical innovations in predictive modeling, machine learning, and design optimization, for concurrent design integration of products and remanufacturing processes of multiple life cycle products for enhanced sustainability and resilience. The technical innovations will address critical challenges in remanufacturing with respect to repair policy analysis, end-of-life product damage detection, remanufacturing inspection, optimum repair policies as well as design and remanufacturing integration. Platform validation will be carried out by working with an industrial partner on an agricultural vehicle hydraulic manifold design application. This research will integrate the newly generated knowledge into education and outreach activities, emphasizing broadening the participation of underrepresented groups in sustainable design science.The research objective of this project is to create a new product design platform for designing multi-life cycle products while concurrently considering their remanufacturing processes. To close the gap between two decision making problems that are currently separately considered in product design and product remanufacturing processes, the research will be conducted within three research tasks: (1) quantification and allocation of remanufacturing resilience, which will derive a remanufacturing resilience measure for the first time and formulate a novel top-level resilience allocation problem; (2) remanufacturing co-design for repairability, which will formulate a new bottom-level remanufacturing co-design problem for the detailed design of components and their remanufacturing repair policies; and (3) design of remanufacturing inspection processes, which will create a new bottom-level design methodology for automated remanufacturing inspection systems. If successful, this research will lay the important foundation for a paradigm shift from the traditional approach of separate decision-making for product design and end-of-life considerations to a holistic framework for concurrent product design and remanufacturing process integration.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.