Disassembly Process Planning

Both market pressures and the threat of legislation are causing a rapid growth in interest in disassembly and recycling. In the UK, as elsewhere, the recycling industry is fragmented and undeveloped; demand for recycled materials will need to increase before recycling operations can be greatly expanded. Complex products of mixed materials are the feedstock of disassembly plants; these products can be classified by their structure, complexity and the degree to which the recycling value is concentrated within them. We have identified ten basic manual disassembly processes for use in planning disassembly. Tests carried out on computer monitors show that the disassembly times for individual processes are variable but that disassembly of product samples can yield useful data for estimating the feasibility of large-scale plants. Such plants can handle single products or mixed streams: the plant layout needs to be planned bearing in mind buffer storage, sorting of the parts removed and work on specific subassemblies.