Optimal and intelligent decision making in sustainable development of electronic products

Increasing global population and consumption are causing declining natural and social systems. Multi-lifecycle engineering and sustainable development address these issues by integrating strategies for economic successes, environmental quality, and social equity. Based on multi-lifecycle engineering and sustainable development concepts, this doctoral dissertation aims to provide decision making approaches to growing a strong industrial economy while maintaining a clean, healthy environment. The research develops a methodology to complete both the disassembly leveling and bin assignment decisions in demanufacturing through balancing the disassembly efforts, value returns, and environmental impacts. The proposed method is successfully implemented into a demanufacturing module of a Multi-LifeCycle Assessment and Analysis tool. The methodology is illustrated by a computer product example. Since products during the use stage may experience very different conditions, their external and internal status can vary significantly. These products, when coming to a demanufacturing facility, are often associated with incomplete/imprecise information, which complicates demanufacturing process decision making. In order to deal with uncertain information, this research proposes Fuzzy Reasoning Petri nets to model and reason knowledge-based systems and successfully applies them to demanufacturing process decision making to obtain the maximal End-of-Life (BOL) value from discarded products. Besides the BOL management of products by means of product/material recovery to decrease environmental impacts, the concepts of design for environment and sustainable development are investigated. Based on Sustainability Target Method, a sensitivity analysis decision-making method is proposed. It provides a company with suggestions to improve its product's sustainability in the most cost-effective manner.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctor of Philosophy in Computer Engineering - (Ph.D.)

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Year

2003

Author dc:creator

• Gao, Meimei

Contributors dc:contributor

• MengChu Zhou
• Reggie J. Caudill
• Nirwan Ansari

• Decision making
• Fuzzy reasoning
• Demanufacturing
• Sustainable development
• Petri nets
• Computer Engineering

Repository record dc:identifier

https://digitalcommons.njit.edu/dissertations/589

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:digitalcommons.njit.edu:dissertations-1644