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Short life cycle products are frequently replaced and discarded, even though they are resource-intensive products. Technological advances and rapid changes in demand have led manufacturers to develop their innovative next-generation products quickly, which not only enables multiple generations to coexist in the market but also speeds up the technological obsolescence of products. Diversity of collected end-of-life (EoL) and rapid technological obsolescence make the effective recovery of EoL products difficult. The low utilization rate of EoL products causes serious environmental problems such as e-waste and waste of natural resources. To deal with the conflict between the technical evolution of products and the promotion of social benefits in solving environmental problems, this paper focuses on the impact of generational commonality effects on the overall production process including manufacturing and remanufacturing. Generational commonality leads to an increase in the efficiency of manufacturing due to reducing related costs. Additionally, from the remanufacturing perspective, the interchangeability between generations can help collect the EoL products needed for remanufacturing. On the other hand, it causes a weakening of the level of performance and technology evolution between generations that significantly affect the demand for short life cycle products. Therefore, this study identifies these trade-offs of generational commonality levels in both manufacturing and remanufacturing based on a quantitative approach. This study finds how different pricing strategies, production plans, and recovery costs are based on the designs of a new generation with a different degree of generational commonality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Selecting the appropriate components to share in product family design is not a trivial decision; especially when a firm wants to protect the most sensitive information contained in their products from being exposed to users, third-party manufacturers, or undesirable agents. This article proposes tools to help designers identify sets of components containing sensitive information, as well as components that are candidates for sharing amongst the family. It also finds the most desirable component arrangement in each product that facilitates sharing while protecting the sensitive information that has been previously identified. The proposed framework is applied to three printers in which the architecture used for the ink cartridges and printheads are significantly different. Third-party manufacturers and remanufacturers offer their own alternatives for these subsystems (ink cartridges and printheads) since the customer for printer supplies is always looking for a cheaper alternative; meanwhile, the original equipment manufacturers attempt to secure their products and retain their customers with original supplies. The functional description of the system is analysed to identify the sensitive components for each printer; then, the optimal clustering strategy is found, as well as the set of components that are candidates for sharing, according to their connectivity and the security considerations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Product family design via component sharing is a widely practiced approach for offering sufficient variety to the market in an economical way. When discussing product family design, most previous research has focused on its benefits in the design and manufacturing stages. This article highlights another important aspect of product family design: the impact of component sharing on end-of-life management. This article presents a quantitative model for assessing product family design from an end-of-life perspective. Using mixed integer programming, the developed model identifies an optimal strategy for managing product take-back and end-of-life recovery, thereby assessing the product family design in terms of its profitability in end-of-life management. Especially, the model incorporates increased component interchangeability by component sharing. A design study of a smart phone family is presented, as an illustration, and the results show that the model can assess profitability of a family design and highlight preferred family design alternatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The design of an architecture for a family of products is a challenging task. Traditionally, only a single product case is considered when optimization techniques are used to define the optimum clustering of the components, or in other words the module definition for the product. This article proposes a framework to analyse multiple products of a given family and achieve an optimal module definition considering component sharing across some or all the products. The optimal sharing decision process is implemented with a dual objective function: a 'minimum description length' representation of the overall product architecture, and the 'impact metric' description of the selected components to share. An illustration example is developed for three digital cameras of the same brand and the results reveal the recommended set of components to share across the family as well as the optimal architecture for each one of the products. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the rapid development of new technology and the growing global competition in industry, it is essential for companies to protect their sensitive product designs and technologies. To ensure that their systems are not exploited by potential patent infringers, original equipment manufacturers often apply physical attributes and/or reduce commonality within a product family to prevent easy reusing and recovering. Yet, these design strategies are key barriers to the sustainable recovery and recycling of products. To address these trade-offs, this paper proposes a stepwise methodology to identify the sustainable optimal product family architecture design while protecting intellectual property on sensitive parts or modules. The developed approach notably allows the selection of suitable and sustainable candidates to share among products, taking into account the cost-benefit of commonality within the product family. To demonstrate and test the proposed methodology, a case study is performed with a printer-product family. Environmental savings resulting from the new modular-based architecture obtained for this product family are quantified and discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]