Computer- Aided green product design based on product structure variation

Environmental issues have become an imperative for most modern companies. They are under pressure on making the product development process compliant with recent green directives. Product structure is recognized as a critical factor for reducing environmental impact in product end-of-life. However, most previous studies failed to leverage the latitude at the design stage due to the assumption of a fixed product structure. We propose a CAD-supported tool that allows automatic variation of 3D product structure by combination of parts, selection of assembly method, and re- Arranging the assembly sequence. A GA-based optimization scheme is developed to produce a better product structure corresponding to lower assembly/disassembly costs, while fulfilling with given recycling and recovering constraints. The results implemented in a commercial CAD system demonstrate the practicality of this work in computeraided green product design. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2010.