Performance Analysis of Alternative Designs for a Vehicle Disassembly System Using Simulation Modeling

Abstract

Recently some regulations such as EPR (Extended Producer Responsibilities) have forced companies to develop an interest in recycling systems. In particular, these regulations are focused on the reuse of product materials to resolve environmental disruption or waste disposal. Unfortunately, a large amount of research has been conducted only in the field of mass production, rather than in the automotive disassembly systems that are more likely to have significant opportunities for reuse and recycling. Therefore, it has become necessary to conduct analytic research on systems with the capacity to deal with the annually increasing number of vehicles for disassembly. In this paper, we evaluate four existing vehicle disassembly systems and propose a new and improved alternative disassembly system. We also conduct performance analysis for each system using simulation modeling. Furthermore, we propose 4 alternatives and test their efficiencies in order to improve their performances.