Traditionally, Single Use Devices (SUDs) have been used and discarded, as the name suggests. These SUDs include operating room devices used in areas such as arthroscopy and laparoscopy, devices such as catheters in cardiovascular surgery and in endoscopy, and other general products. However, many of these devices can be remanufactured. Hospitals face challenges in reducing costs. They are increasingly turning to reusing these SUDs. The use of SUDs by a local hospital is examined with the focus on the savings achieved through the program, as well as problems encountered in the process of implementing the program. Various aspects of the remanufacture and use of such devices, including the economics, quality, and customer perception are examined, as well as medical users attitudes. The success of the current program, and its viability in the future are also examined.

The main thrust of returnable packaging these days is to provide logistical services through transportation and distribution of products and be environmentally friendly. Returnable packaging and reverse logistics concepts have converged to mitigate the adverse effect of packaging materials entering the solid waste stream. Returnable packaging must be designed by considering the trade-offs between costs and environmental impact to satisfy manufacturers and environmentalists alike. The cost of returnable packaging entails such items as materials, manufacturing, collection, storage and disposal. Environmental impacts are explicitly linked with solid waste, air pollution, and water pollution. This paper presents a multi-criteria evaluation technique to assist decision-makers for evaluating the trade-offs in costs and environmental impact during the returnable packaging design process. The proposed evaluation technique involves a combination of multiple objective integer linear programming and analytic hierarchy process. A numerical example is used to illustrate the methodology.

The cost-benefit analysis of data associated with re-processing of used products often involves the uncertainty feature of cash-flow modeling. The data is not objective because of uncertainties in supply, quality and disassembly times of used products. Hence, decision-makers must rely on “fuzzy” data for analysis. The same parties that are involved in the forward supply chain often carry out the collection and re-processing of used products. It is therefore important that the cost-benefit analysis takes the data of both new products and used products into account. In this paper, a fuzzy cost-benefit function is proposed that is used to perform a multi-criteria economic analysis to select the most economical products to process in a closed-loop supply chain. Application of the function is detailed through an illustrative example.

The latest enhancements in industrial technologies, especially the ones in electronics industry, have provided organizations with the ability to manufacture faster and more economical products. This fact, coupled with the growing interest and demand for the latest technology, have led electronic equipment manufacturers to start producing “hightech” and “personalized” products at an increasing rate. This has led to a high rate of obsolescence for electronic products worldwide, even though the majority of these “obsolete” products still function. In this paper, we investigate a product recovery facility where the end-of-life (EOL) products are taken back from the last users and are brought into the facility for processing. We assume that there are multiple types of EOL products and that a combination of these can be disassembled to provide for a sufficient number of demanded components and materials. We then present a data envelopment analysis (DEA) algorithm to determine the number and types of the EOL products that will be required to fulfill the demand. A numerical example is presented to demonstrate the functionality of the methodology.

This paper deals with the cost management problem of a remanufacturing system with stochastic variability in the demand rate, the remanufacturing rate and the discard rate. We consider two types of inventories. One is the actual product inventory in the factory while the other is the virtual inventory that is still in use by the consumers. The state of the remanufacturing system is defined by considering the levels of both inventories. The cost function is composed of various costs such as the holding cost, backlogging cost and other manufacturing costs. We obtain the optimal production policy that minimizes the expected average cost per period. Numerical results provide insights on the effects of the various costs on the optimal policy.

European environmental legislation has significantly evolved over the last few years, forcing manufacturers to be more environmentally aware and to introduce ecological criteria in their traditional practices. One of the most important goals of this set of regulations is to reduce the amount of solid waste generated per unit of time by promoting recycling, repair, reuse and other recovery strategies at the product end of life (EOL). However, one of the most difficult steps for manufacturers is that of deciding which of these options or which combination of them should be implemented to get the maximum recovery value taking into account the specific characteristics of each product. In this paper, a recurrent algorithm is proposed to determine the optimal end-of-life strategy. On the basis of the product bill of materials and its graphical CAD/CAM representation, the model will determine to what extent the product should be disassembled and what the final end of each disassembled part should be (reuse, recycling or disposal). The paper starts by presenting an overview of the model, to then focus on the CAD-integrated algorithm for determining the optimum disassembly sequence, a necessary step in EOL decision-making.

This paper develops a computational methodology that allows decision-makers to calculate the disassembly cost of a product before it is built. The methodology makes it simple to perform "what if" scenarios fairly quickly. A Java based application has been developed to implement this methodology and it uses computational algorithms and a graphical user interface to enable designers to simulate product designs. The front end user interface is a Java based application while the back-end is the combination of a data parser and disassembly engine, which also makes use of Java and XML technologies. The disassembly engine performs calculations based on data represented in an XML data store and runs as the back-end component of the computational tools. The user interface has the ability to display a dynamically configurable disassembly tree. The disassembly knowledge is represented in XML format to allow robust and scalable parsing and processing of the various disassembly alternatives that correspond to the configurable disassembly tree. Examples are presented to demonstrate the implementation and capabilities of the computational design methodology presented in this paper.

Disassembly line balancing problem (DLBP) aims at finding a feasible assignment of disassembly tasks to workstations such that precedence relations among tasks are satisfied and some measure of effectiveness is optimized. We consider partial disassembly under limited supply of a single product as well as availability of its subassemblies. Hence, in satisfying the demand for revenue generating parts, both discarded products and available subassemblies can be utilized. We assume that part revenues and demand, task times and costs, inventory holding costs, and station opening costs are given. We propose two DLBP formulations. The first one maximizes the profit per disassembly cycle. The second formulation maximizes the profit over the whole planning horizon. Proposed formulations and computational results are presented.

Disassembly activities are an important part of product recovery operations. The disassembly line is the best choice for automated disassembly of returned products. However, finding the optimal balance for a disassembly line is computationally intensive with exhaustive search quickly becoming prohibitively large. In this paper, a greedy algorithm is presented for obtaining optimal or near-optimal solutions to the disassembly line-balancing problem. The greedy algorithm is a first-fit decreasing algorithm further enhanced to preserve precedence relationships. The algorithm seeks to minimize the number of workstations while addressing hazardous and high demand components. A two optimal algorithm is then developed to balance the part removal sequence and attempt to further reduce the total number of workstations. Examples are considered to illustrate the methodology. The conclusions drawn from the study include the consistent generation of optimal or near-optimal solutions, the ability to preserve precedence, the speed of the algorithms and their practicality due to the ease of implementation.

In recent years, the continuous growth in consumer waste and dwindling natural resources has seriously threatened the environment. Realizing this, several countries have passed regulations that force manufacturers not only to manufacture environmentally conscious products, but also to take back their used products from consumers so that the components and materials recovered from the products may be reused and/or recycled. Disassembly plays an important role in product recovery. A disassembly line is perhaps the most suitable setting for disassembly of products in large quantities. Because a disassembly line has a tendency to generate excessive inventory, employing a kanban system can reduce the inventory level and let the system run more efficiently. A disassembly line is quite different from an assembly line. For example, not only can the demand arrive at the last station, it can also arrive at any of the other stations in the system. The demand for a component on the disassembly line could fluctuate widely. In fact, there are many other complicating matters that need to be considered to implement the concept of kanbans in such an environment. In this paper, we discuss the complications that are unique to a disassembly line. We discuss the complications in utilizing the conventional production control mechanisms in a disassembly line setting. We then show how to overcome them by implementing kanbans in a disassembly line setting with demand fluctuation and introduce the concept of multi-kanban mechanism. We demonstrate its effectiveness using a simulation model. An example is presented to illustrate the concept.

Recycling of Waste of Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) is a matter of actual concern, driven by economic, ecological and legislative reasons. Here, disassembly as the first step of the treatment process plays a key role. To achieve sustainable progress in WEEE disassembly, the key is not to limit analysis and planning to merely disassembly processes in a narrow sense, but to consider entire disassembly plants including additional aspects such as internal logistics, storage, sorting etc. as well. In this regard, the paper presents ways of designing, dimensioning, structuring and modeling different disassembly systems. Goal is to achieve efficient and economic disassembly systems that allow recycling processes complying with legal requirements. Moreover, advantages of applying simulation software tools that are widespread and successfully utilized in conventional industry sectors are addressed. They support systematic disassembly planning by means of simulation experiments including consecutive efficiency evaluation. Consequently, anticipatory recycling planning considering various scenarios is enabled and decisions about which types of disassembly systems evidence appropriateness for specific circumstances such as product spectrum, throughput, disassembly depth etc. is supported. Furthermore, integration of simulation based disassembly planning in a holistic concept with configuration of interfaces and data utilization including cost aspects is described.

The strategy to recover components from discarded electrical and electronic equipment to obtain spare parts is promising, especially during the final service phase. In that phase, the original product is no longer produced and the sources of new parts are often limited. Controlling those closed-loop supply chains is challenging. Decision makers have to choose when to acquire discarded equipment, when to recover used parts, and when to produce new parts. We developed a generic system dynamics model that provides a test for various proposed policies to control closed-loop supply chains with parts recovery and spare-parts supply.

An increasing number of manufacturers is responsible for the complete lifecycle of their products and they must create efficient and effective circular flow economic systems. The quality of these material and product cycles depend on the logistical processes and the development of logistic concepts, which have to suffer economic and ecological aims. The complexity of the different circular economic systems need the co-operation of the different participants in order to integrate the different core abilities. The aim of this contribution is to describe the possibilities of the service providers in combining services and transports of supply and waste disposal. As well as to represent their advantages, disadvantages and possible barriers. It was possible to refer to conclusions of the research project “Konfiguration von kooperativen Kreislaufwirtschaftssystemen unter besonderer Berücksichtigung von Logistikdienstleistern” within the scope of the Research Center of Logistics at the University of Bremen (FoLo). The research work was carried out in a closed collaboration of the following institutes and enterprises: University of Bremen, the Institute of Shipping Economics and Logistics (ISL) and the BLG International Logistics GmbH & Co.

It has become common for manufacturing facilities involved in production of new products to also carry out collection and re-processing of used products. While environmental consciousness has become an obligation to the facilities in the production of new products due to governmental regulations and public perspective on environmental issues, potentiality of the facilities to re-process used products directly affects the profitability of the facilities. Although many papers in the literature deal with performance evaluation of facilities, none of them address these two factors. To this end, a TOPSIS (Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to an Ideal Solution) approach, which evaluates production facilities in terms of both environmental-consciousness and potentiality, is proposed. Furthermore, since most of the criteria that fall under these two factors are intangible, triangular fuzzy numbers (TFNs) are employed to rate them in the evaluation process. A numerical example demonstrates the feasibility of the proposed method.

Although there are many quantitative models in the literature to design a reverse supply chain, every model assumes that all the recovery facilities that are engaged in the supply chain have enough potential to efficiently re-process the incoming used products. Motivated by the risk of re-processing used products in facilities of insufficient potentiality, this paper proposes a method to identify potential facilities in a set of candidate recovery facilities operating in a region where a reverse supply chain is to be established. In this paper, the problem is solved using a newly developed method called physical programming. The most significant advantage of using physical programming is that it allows a decision maker to express his preferences for values of criteria (for comparing the alternatives), not in the traditional form of weights but in terms of ranges of different degrees of desirability, such as ideal range, desirable range, highly desirable range, undesirable range, and unacceptable range. A numerical example is considered to illustrate the proposed method.

Globalization results in both pressure and drivers for Chinese enterprise to improve their environmental performance. As a developing country, China has to balance economic and environmental performance. Green supply chain management (GSCM) is emerging to be an important approach for Chinese enterprises to improve performance, possibly on both these dimensions. Using empirical results from 89 respondents on GSCM practice in Chinese manufacturing enterprises, we examine the relationships between pressures, practice and performance. The results will look at multiple dimensions of GSCM practice and performance, as well as various pressures they face. Discussion of the results will include practical implications for organizations, not only in China, but internationally who face similar pressures and seek to implement similar programs.

This study explores what the literature indicates is occurring in environmentally conscious manufacturing (ECM), versus what companies in the electronics manufacturing sector actually report on their websites. It highlights the differences between the literature and practice, pointing to a proactive trend in ECM among large companies. Adequate measures for reporting the real costs and benefits of ECM appear to be lacking. Using a resource-based view of the firm, an organization with limited resources will only devote those resources to activities where the perceived benefits exceed the cost. In a metrics-oriented world, lack of measurement and reporting can undermine the future growth of ECM. In addition, many of the costs and benefits of ECM may not be explicitly recognized, but rather assumed. This may relegate ECM approaches to be categorized as “necessary for compliance” or “cost centers”, when in fact there may be significant benefits. This could limit ECM to meet regulatory compliance, and little more. To highlight the potential contribution of ECM to the corporation’s success this study compares and contrasts current literature with existing operational practices discovered by gathering secondary data from the websites of environmentally proactive organizations.

There is a need for investigators, legislators, and business leaders to understand the magnitude of innovation and discovery in the field of environmentally conscious technologies (ECTs). Knowledge of the “big picture” is important to providing a national and global account of actual environmental stewardship over the last twenty-five years. A recitation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) supported Acts which have been enacted into law reveals one facet of the multifaceted dynamic of environmental consciousness. The popular discussion and debate, as well as partisan lobbying, which created the political forces leading to environmentally conscious legislation is another facet. A third facet is the corporate response to the threats and opportunities predicted by CEO’s and others through environmental scanning. This paper examines changes in environmentally conscious inventive effort by comparing data from United States Patents issued from 1976 through 2003. Patents are useful tool for measuring technological innovation because they are publicly available records of innovative activity. Although not all inventions result in patent applications, the monopoly rights granted on the invention give the inventor a strong incentive to obtain patents on any viable product or process. Among the results, we found a significant increase in patents relating to environmentally conscious products and processes during the period in question. Specifically, a dramatic increase in patent activity was seen for the decade of the 1990’s. Surprisingly, the patenting rate from 2000 to 2003 seems to have stabilized. Additionally public discussion of ECTs appears to have a positive impact on patent filings.

Improving a company’s environmental and financial performance necessitates the evaluation of environmental impacts deriving from the production and cost effects of corporate actions. These effects have to be made transparent and concrete targets have to be developed. Such an evaluation has to be done on a regular basis but with limited expenses. To achieve this, different instruments of environmental controlling such as LCA and environmental performance indicators have to be combined with methods from cost accounting. Within the research project CARE (Computer Aided Resource Efficiency Accounting for Medium-Sized Enterprises), the method Resource Efficiency Accounting (REA) is used to give the participating companies new insights into hidden costs and environmental effects of their production and products. The method combines process based cost accounting with environmental impact assessment methodology and offers results that can be integrated into a company’s environmental controlling system and business processes like cost accounting, supplier assessment, etc. Much of the data necessary for the combined assessment can be available within a company’s IT system and therefore can be efficiently used for the assessment process. The project CARE puts a strong focus on the use of company data and information systems for the described assessment process and offers a methodological background for the evaluation and the structuring of such data. Besides the general approach of the project CARE the paper will present results from a case study in which the described approach is used for the evaluation of suppliers.

Environmental management, to be effective, requires performance evaluation and process improvement. This is especially the case in fossil-fueled electricity generating plants. Although eco-efficient management of these types of organizations are critical to local, national and global environmental issues, few studies have focused on performance measurement and eco-efficiency improvements in this industry. This study evaluates the eco-efficiencies of the top 100 major U.S. fossil-fueled electricity generating plants from 1998 data. Using a multi-criteria non-parametric productivity model (data envelopment analysis) efficiency scores are determined. These efficiency scores are treated by a clustering method in identifying benchmarks for improving poorly performing plants. Efficiency measures are based on three resource input measures including boiler generating capacity, total fuel heat used, and total generator capacity, and four output measures including actual energy generated, SO2, NOx, and CO2 emissions. The purpose of this paper is two-fold, to introduce the methodology’s application to eco-efficiency performance measurement and show some characteristics of the benchmarked plants and groups.

Pollution prevention is a complex task. Many small foundries lack the in-house expertise to perform these tasks. Expert systems are a type of computer information system that incorporates artificial intelligence. As noted in the literature, they provide a means of automating specialized expertise. This approach may be further leveraged by implementing the expert system on the internet (or world-wide web). This will allow distribution of the expertise to a variety of geographically-dispersed foundries. The purpose of this research is to develop a prototype web-based expert system to support pollution prevention for the foundry industry. The prototype system identifies potential emissions for a specified process, and also provides recommendations for the prevention of these contaminants. The system is viewed as an initial step toward assisting the foundry industry in better meeting government pollution regulations, as well as improving operating efficiencies within these companies.

Since 1970’s, the environmental protection movement has challenged industries to increase their investment in Environmentally Conscious Manufacturing (ECM) techniques and management tools. Social considerations for global citizens and their descendants also motivated the examination on the complex issues of sustainable development beyond the immediate economic impact. Consequently, industrial enterprises have started to understand sustainable development in considering the Triple Bottom Line (TBL): economic prosperity, environmental quality and social justice. For the management, however, a lack of systematic ECM methodologies hinders their effort in planning, evaluating, reporting and auditing of sustainability. To address this critical need, this research develops a framework of a sustainable management system by incorporating a Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) of industrial operations with the TBL mechanism. A TBL metric system with seven sets of indices for the TBL elements and their complex relations is identified for the comprehensive evaluation of a company’s sustainability performance. Utilities of the TBL indices are estimated to represent the views of various stakeholders, including the company, investors, employees and the society at large. Costs of these indices are also captured to reflect the company’s effort in meeting the utilities. An optimization model is formulated to maximize the economic, environmental and social benefits by the company’s effort in developing sustainable strategies. To promote environmental and social consciousness, the methodology can significantly facilitate management decisions by its capabilities of including “non-business” values and external costs that the company has not contemplated before.

Nearly all life cycle assessment tools available today are high priced, comprehensive and quantitative models requiring a significant amount of data collection and data input. In addition, most of the available software packages require a great deal of training time to learn how to operate the model software. Even after this time investment, results are not guaranteed because of the number of estimations and assumptions often necessary to run the model. As a result, product development, design teams and environmental specialists need a simplified tool that will allow for the qualitative evaluation and "screening" of various design options. This paper presents the development and design of a generic, qualitative life cycle screening model and demonstrates its applicability and ease of use. The model uses qualitative environmental, health and safety factors, based on site or product-specific issues, to sensitize the overall results for a given set of conditions. The paper also evaluates the impact of different population input ranking values on model output. The final analysis is based on site or product-specific variables. The user can then evaluate various design changes and the apparent impact or improvement on the environment, health and safety, compliance cost and overall corporate liability. Major input parameters can be varied, and factors such as materials use, pollution prevention, waste minimization, worker safety, product life, environmental impacts, return of investment, and recycle are evaluated. The flexibility of the model format will be discussed in order to demonstrate the applicability and usefulness within nearly any industry sector. Finally, an example using audience input value scores will be compared to other population input results.

Collectors of discarded products seldom know when those products were bought and why they are discarded. Also, the products do not indicate their remaining life periods. So, it is difficult to decide if it is “sensible” to repair (if necessary) a particular product for subsequent sale on the second-hand market or to disassemble it partially or completely for subsequent remanufacture and/or recycle. To this end, we build an expert system using Bayesian updating process and fuzzy set theory, to aid such decision-making. A numerical example demonstrates the building approach.

Today, growing amounts of waste due to fast consumption rate of products started an irreversible environmental pollution and damage. A considerable part of this waste is caused by packaging material. With the realization of this fact, various waste policies have taken important steps. Here we considered a firm, where waste Aluminum constitutes majority of raw materials for this fir0m. In order to achieve a profitable recycling process, plant layout should be well designed. In this study, we propose a two-step approach involving Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to solve facility layout design problems. A case example is considered to demonstrate the results achieved.

The implementation of current developments in environmental protection requires an intercompany cooperation. In particular if aims are pursued, which are relevant for the circular flow economy. Its main aim is to obtain a protection of nature and natural resources by achieving closed loops (related to products, materials etc.). Cooperation within circular flow economy should be composed of all participants, which are involved in the life cycle of a product (e.g. supplier, producer, retailer, distributors, re-distributors, re-producer). Therefore information has to exchange between the participants. The exchange of information can regard as a qualification for the realization of closed loops. To implement circular flow economy it is necessary to decide on environmentally conscious measures. For example which logistic processes are necessary. In this context the paper deals with an investigation of logistic processes in order to realize an economical configuration of circular flow economy systems. Therefore we use results of a research project ("Konfiguration von kooperativen Kreislaufwirtschaftssystemen unter besonderer Berücksichtigung von Logistikdienstleistern" within the scope of the Research Center of Logistics at the University of Bremen (FoLo)). This research project was accomplished in cooperation with the University of Bremen, the Institute of Shipping Economics and Logistics (ISL) as well as the BLG International Logistics GmbH & Co.

Older, "low-tech" batch manufacturing operations are often fertile grounds for gains resulting from pollution prevention techniques. This paper presents a pollution prevention technique utilized for wastewater discharge permit compliance purposes at a batch manufacturer of detergents, deodorants, and floor-care products. This manufacturer generated industrial wastewater as a result of equipment rinses required after each product batch changeover. After investing a significant amount of capital on end of pip-line wastewater treatment technology designed to address existing discharge limits, this manufacturer chose to investigate alternate, low-cost approaches to address anticipated new permit limits. Mass balances using spreadsheets and readily available formulation and production data were conducted on over 300 products to determine how each individual product contributed to the total wastewater pollutant load. These mass balances indicated that 22 products accounted for over 55% of the wastewater pollutant. Laboratory tests were conducted to determine whether these same products could accept their individual changeover rinse water as make-up water in formulations without sacrificing product quality. This changeover reuse technique was then implement at the plant scale for selected products. Significant reductions in wastewater volume (25%) and wastewater pollutant loading (85+%) were realized as a direct result of this approach.