E. Kroll, APPLICATION OF WORK-MEASUREMENT ANALYSIS TO PRODUCT DISASSEMBLY FOR RECYCLING, Concurrent engineering, research and applications, 4(2), 1996, pp. 149-158
A method for evaluating the ease of disassembly of products is introdu
ced. Its primary use is in designing products for recycling and making
environmentally-related decisions, but it is also relevant to servici
ng and maintenance. The evaluation procedure is centered around a spre
adsheet-like chart and uses a catalog of task difficulty scores. The s
cores were derived from work-measurement analyses of standard disassem
bly tasks and provide a means of identifying weaknesses in the design
and comparing alternatives quantitatively. The procedure of applying w
ork-measurement analysis to disassembly tasks is described and demonst
rated in detail. A relatively simple example of disassembly evaluation
of a computer drives assembly illustrates the use of the method and i
ts implementation as a design tool.