The goal of this research is to ensure the economical and environmental efficiency of reverse supply chains for demanufacturing. Demanufacturing is concerned with the reclamation of the residual economical and environmental value of end-of-life products by disassembling them and recovering components and materials for reuse. This research will focus on the development and analysis of integrated supply and demand management strategies as well as disassembly and recovery operations management policies for reverse supply chains for demanufacturing. Explicit consideration will be given to factors that influence the complexity of demanufacturing in practice. These factors pertain to the characteristics of supply in the disposal market, bill-of-material structure of the end-of-life product, disassembly and recovery cost structures, and characteristics of demand in the reuse market. This research will concentrate on the development of analytical models and domain-specific solution methodologies to provide analytical and computational tools that allow for a comparison of economical and environmental performance implications of alternative integrated supply and demand management strategies and disassembly and recovery operations management policies for demanufacturing.
This research will be important for the analysis of environmental legislative initiatives and the development of public policies for the design and operation of economically sound and environmentally safe reverse supply chains for demanufacturing. Moreover, as this research agenda has been developed in collaboration with local industry partners in Florida, the research will help with the identification of emerging best industry practice and foster stronger interactions between the industry and academic partners. Graduate and undergraduate engineering students will benefit from the planned educational material development and industry outreach activities. In addition, the development of environmentally oriented service projects for student organizations will help raise the environmental awareness of future generations of engineers.
