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Purpose: Remanufactured products, in addition to being environment friendly, are popular with consumers because they can offer the latest technology with lower prices in comparison to brand new products. However, some consumers are hesitant to buy remanufactured products because they are skeptical about the quality of the remanufactured product and thus are unsure of the extent to which the product will render services when compared to a new product. A strategy that remanufacturers may employ to entice customers is to offer warranties on remanufactured products. To that end, this paper studies and scrutinizes the impact of offering renewing warranties on remanufactured products. Specifically, the paper suggests a methodology which simultaneously minimizes the cost incurred by the remanufacturers and maximizes the confidence of the consumers towards buying remanufacturing products. Design/methodology/approach: This study uses discrete-event simulation to optimize the implementation of a two-dimensional renewing warranty policy for remanufactured products. The implementation is illustrated using a specific product recovery system called the Advanced Remanufacturing-To-Order (ARTO) system. The experiments used in the study were designed using Taguchi’s Orthogonal Arrays to represent the entire domain of the recovery system so as to observe the system behavior under various experimental conditions. In order to determine the optimum strategy offered by the remanufacturer, various warranty and preventive maintenance scenarios were analyzed using pairwise t-tests along with one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) and Tukey pairwise comparisons tests for every scenario. Findings: The proposed methodology is able to simultaneously minimize the cost incurred by the remanufacturer, optimize the warranty price and period, and optimize the preventive maintenance strategy resulting in increased consumer confidence. Originality/value: This is the first study that evaluates in a quantitative and comprehensive manner the potential benefits of offering warranties with preventive maintenance on remanufactured products.

In today's global environment, technology is constantly evolving. Being able to stay up-to-date with the very latest technological advances can be extremely hard to accomplish. As a result of these changes and developments in technology, which often come unexpectedly, consumers are frequently tempted to update their devices to the very latest model. The result is that the life cycle of a product is becoming shorter and shorter than before. Manufacturers attempt to respond to consumers' concerns involving environmental issues as well as the more governmentally stringent environmental legislations by establishing facilities which include the minimization of the totality of waste relocated to landfills by recovering materials and components from returned, or End-Of-Life products and reuse them to build a remanufactured product, and/or novel components. With the rapid growth of interest in remanufactured products' market, offering warranty for remanufactured products and components is becoming a necessity for remanufacturer in order to meet customers' requirement and as a marketing mechanism. During that process, maintenance policies are of great importance in order to reduce the warranty cost on the remanufacturer. In this paper, an optimization simulation model for remanufactured items sold with one-dimensional non-renewing money-back guarantee (MBG) warranty policy is proposed from the view of remanufacturer, in which, an End-Of-Life product is subjected to upgrade action at the end of its past life and during the warranty period, preventive maintenance actions are carried out when the remaining life of the product reaches a pre-specified value so that the remanufacturer's expected profit can be maximized. Finally, a numerical example and design of experiment analysis are provided to demonstrate the proposed approach.

The costs associated with inspecting wind turbines are high due to their size and complexity. One potential method by which such costs can be reduced, is through the development of robust systems that can monitor the conditions of wind turbines remotely. This study proposes embedding sensors into wind turbines to monitor the conditions of the wind turbines throughout their life cycles. The information retrieved from these sensors could be helpful in two ways: It could facilitate the provision of predictive maintenance for the turbines and enhance the performance of end-of-life (EOL) processing operations. During the maintenance phase, sensors can help to predict failures before they occur because they provide condition information about the products. During the EOL processing phase, they help to improve disassembly and inspection operations. Therefore, the use of embedded sensors in wind turbines could potentially reduce maintenance costs and increase EOL profit. This study compares regular and sensor-embedded wind turbine systems, which are modeled using discrete event simulation. A design of experiments study was carried out on the models. During the experimental stage, while conducting experiments, key variables, such as maintenance cost, disassembly cost, inspection cost, and EOL profit, were monitored. At the analysis stage, pairwise t-tests were performed to determine the statistical significance of the results. The results stage revealed that sensors can provide significant benefits to closed-loop supply chain systems when they are embedded into wind turbines.

Increasing consumer awareness towards environmental issues and stricter environmental legislation have forced many manufacturers to set up facilities for product recovery which involves the minimization of the amount of waste sent to landfills by recovering materials and components from returned or end-of-life (EOL) products. Disassembly is an important process in product recovery since it allows for the selective separation of desired parts and materials. EOL products involving missing and/or nonfunctional components increase the uncertainty associated with disassembly yield. Testing, a common solution method, results in high costs. Moreover, if the component is found to be defective, the disassembly time is wasted. Sensor-embedded products (SEPs) can deal with this uncertainty by providing information on the condition of components prior to disassembly. This study evaluates the impact of SEPs on the various performance measures of an air conditioner (AC) disassembly line controlled by a multikanban system which effectively manages material flows considering the stochastic behavior of the disassembly line. First, separate design-of-experiments studies based on orthogonal arrays are carried out for conventional products (CPs) and SEPs. In order to calculate the response values for each experiment, detailed discrete-event simulation models of both cases are developed, considering the precedence relationships among the components of an AC. Then, pairwise t tests are conducted to compare two cases based on different performance measures. The test results show that SEPs improve revenue and profit while achieving significant reductions in backorder, disassembly, disposal, holding, testing, and transportation costs.

The modern world is experiencing an unprecedented pace of technological change. The introduction of new technological products encourages consumers to trade in old products for new so that they can keep up with the latest in technology. One of the consequences of this rapid change in technology is that product life cycles are very short and there is an abundance of old technology products that need to be disposed of, but this is happening at a time when the earth of running out of natural resources and suitable landfill areas. Remanufactured products are very popular with consumers due to their appeal to offer latest technology with lower prices compared to brand new products. The quality of a remanufactured product induces hesitation for many consumers, in regards to its efficacy and reliability. Therefore, the users are unsure if remanufactured products will have the capacity to render the same expected performance as that of a new device. This uncertainty regarding a remanufactured product could lead the consumer to make a determination against its purchase. With such expansive consumer apprehension, remanufacturers often employ marketing strategies in attempts to provide affirmation about product durability. One stratagem that remanufacturers could employ to encourage customer security are product warranties. The aim of this paper is to study and scrutinize the impact that would be had by offering renewing/non-renewing warranties on remanufactured products. The Advanced Remanufacturing-To-Order (ARTO) system deliberated on in this study is a sort of product recovery system. A discrete-event simulation model was developed from the view of remanufacturer for remanufactured items sold with two-dimensional warranty, in which, an End-Of-Use product (EOUP) is subjected to preventive maintenance action when the remaining life of the product reaches a pre-specified value so that the remanufacturer's expected profit can be maximized. Experiments were design using Taguchi's Orthogonal Arrays to represent the full recovery system and observe its behavior under different experimental conditions. In order to assess the impact of warranty and preventive maintenance on remanufacturer total cost, pairwise t tests were carried out along with one-way analyses of variance (ANOVA) and Tukey pairwise comparisons test for each performance measure of the ARTO system.

Sensor embedded products utilize sensors implanted into products during their production process. Sensors are useful in predicting the best warranty policy and warranty period to offer a customer for remanufactured components and products. The conditions and remaining lives of components and products can be estimated prior to offering a warranty based on the data provided by the sensors. This helps reduce the number of claims during warranty periods, determines the right preventive maintenance (PM) policy, and eliminates unnecessary costs inflicted on the remanufacturer. The renewing, one-dimensional Free Replacement Warranty (FRW), Pro-Rata Warranty (PRW), and combination FRW/PRW policies’ costs for remanufactured products and components were evaluated with/without offering PM for different periods in this paper. To that end, the effect of offering renewable, one-dimensional, Free Replacement Warranty (FRW), or Pro-Rata Warranty (PRW), or combination FRW/PRW warranty policies for each disassembled component and sensor embedded remanufactured product was examined, and the impact of sensor embedded products on warranty costs was assessed. A case study and varying simulation scenarios is examined and presented to illustrate the model’s applicability.

Sensors are commonly employed to monitor products during their life cycles and to remotely and continuously track their usage patterns. Installing sensors into products can help generate useful data related to the conditions of products and their components, and this information can subsequently be used to inform EOL decision-making. As such, embedded sensors can enhance the performance of EOL product processing operations. The information collected by the sensors can also be used to estimate and predict product failures, thereby helping to improve maintenance operations. This paper describes a study in which system maintenance and EOL processes were combined and closed-loop supply chain systems were constructed to analyze the financial contribution that sensors can make to these procedures by using discrete event simulation to model and compare regular systems and sensor-embedded systems. The factors that had an impact on the performance measures, such as disassembly cost, maintenance cost, inspection cost, sales revenues, and profitability, were determined and a design of experiments study was carried out. The experiment results were compared, and pairwise t-tests were executed. The results reveal that sensor-embedded systems are significantly superior to regular systems in terms of the identified performance measures.

This paper proposes and investigates the use of embedding sensors in products when designing and manufacturing them to improve the efficiency during their end-of-life (EOL) processing. First, separate design of experiments studies based on orthogonal arrays are carried out for conventional products (CPs) and sensor embedded products (SEPs). In order to calculate the response values for each experiment, detailed discrete event simulation models of both cases are developed considering the precedence relationships among the components together with the routing of different appliance types through the disassembly line. Then, pair-wise t-tests are conducted to compare the two cases based on different performance measures. The results showed that sensor embedded products improve revenue and profit while achieving significant reductions in backorder, disassembly, disposal, holding, testing and transportation costs. While the paper addresses the EOL processing of dish washers and dryers, the approach provided could be extended to any other industrial product.

The relationship of humans to computers can no longer be represented as one person in a chair and one computer on a desk. Today computing finds its way into our pockets, our cars, our appliances; it is ubiquitous -- an inescapable part of our everyday lives. Computing is even expanding beyond our devices; sensors, microcontrollers, and actuators are increasingly embedded into the built environment. In Architectural Robotics , Keith Evan Green looks toward the next frontier in computing: interactive, partly intelligent, meticulously designed physical environments. Green examines how these \"architectural robotic\" systems will support and augment us at work, school, and home, as we roam, interconnect, and age. Green tells the stories of three projects from his research lab that exemplify the reconfigurable , distributed , and transfigurable environments of architectural robotics. The Animated Work Environment is a robotic work environment of shape-shifting physical space that responds dynamically to the working life of the people within it; home+ is a suite of networked, distributed \"robotic furnishings\" integrated into existing domestic and healthcare environments; and LIT ROOM offers a simulated environment in which the physical space of a room merges with the imaginary space of a book, becoming \"a portal to elsewhere.\" How far beyond workstations, furniture, and rooms can the environments of architectural robotics stretch? Green imagines scaled-up neighborhoods, villages, and metropolises composed of physical bits, digital bytes, living things, and their hybrids. Not global but local, architectural robotics grounds computing in a capacious cyber-physical home.