Reliability Modeling in Design for Remanufacture

Abstract

Remanufacture involves the disassembly, cleaning, and replacement or refurbishment of worn parts of products at the end of life. Since the essential goal of remanufacture is part reuse, the reliability of components is important. The goal of this work is to consider reliability effects on life-cycle costs to enable design for reuse. A reliability model is developed to better describe systems that undergo repairs performed during remanufacture or maintenance. This model allows replacement components to be of a type different from the original components. The behavior, preliminary experimental validation, and application of the model to an example are presented.