ENVIRONMENTALLY
CONSCIOUS
DESIGN AND MANUFACTURING RESEARCH
MOHSEN SHAHINPOOR
Editor-In-Chief
KWANG J. KIM
Executive Editor
Albuquerque,
New Mexico
International Journal of Environmentally Conscious Design & Manufacturing
Volume 13, Number 2, 2006-07
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simulation of a closed-loop manufacturing system focused on material balance of forward and inverse flows , by SHINSUKE KONDOH, MASAYUKI SOMA AND YASUSHI UMEDA
Environmental
consciousness
in manufacturing
has increased in
recent years. In order
to maximize the potential of this approach, closed-loop
manufacturing systems,
where products are made from used products, reused parts and
materials from market, as well as new materials, should be established. For factories, the often-complicated
fluctuations associated
with volumes, quality, and supply of these reused resources
make effective management of
these factories considerably
difficult. The purpose of this study was thus to derive rules and conditions
for operating such
factories efficiently by
simulating processes
considering the fluctuations of material supply.
Simulation results show that fluctuations in operation
time during recovery
processes have a significant
impact on the smoothness
of flow through
the entire
system.
Also, variations in the lifetime of
each part in a product is
responsible for low saturation rates of market
demand, although these
variations can
level the load
of recovery processes and decrease inventory levels of the
inverse processes.