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Massachusetts Institute of Technology

The design of a lean automobile dismantling and recycling system

Abstract

dc:description.abstract

The purpose of this project was to design a new, more efficient automobile recycling system for the JMS consortium. JMS is a consortium of l 8 independent automobile recycling facilities processing a collective annual throughout of over 200,000 vehicles. 1 o begin the design process three JMS facilities were studied to establish the system requirements. Based on the requirements a new system was designed using the principles of lean production. Aspects of the system were tested at the same three locations to validate the design. Based on the test results, the lean system design presented herein is expected to increase effective daily throughput 25%, increase the peak throughput rate by 6:%, significantly reduce the handling therefore damage of each vehicle, and reduce the amount of land allocated to non-value adding buffers by 66%. Furthermore, the lean system is balanced and synchronized to the vehicle-arrival process, with increased volume flexibility. Currently, JMS anticipates implementing the design in all new facilities beginning with the Denver project this month. To address the question of what is the optimal throughput rate for JMS facilities, all known profit-influencing variables were parameterized and an analytical model of the profit was established. Using some simplifying assumptions, the profit-maximizing throughput was obtained. From this, three interesting and intuitive results were obtained ...

Degree

thesis:*
Department dc:contributor.department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering
Grantor dc:publisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Year dc:date.issued
1998

Author and committee

dc:creator, dc:contributor.*
Author dc:creator
  • Sheppard, Dean A
Advisor dc:contributor.advisor
  • David S. Cochran.

Subjects

dc:subject × 2

Rights

dc:rights
Statement dc:rights
  • M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.
Language dc:language.iso
eng

Identifiers

dc:identifier.*
Handle dc:identifier.uri
http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/9643
OAI identifier oai:identifier
oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/9643

Chain of custody

source
Harvested from
MIT
Base URL
dspace.mit.edu/oai/request
Last updated
2026-07-22
Source record
OAI-PMH GetRecord
citation

Sheppard, Dean A. The design of a lean automobile dismantling and recycling system. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1998. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/9643