A CASE-BASED REASONING APPROACH TO PLANNING FOR DISASSEMBLY

With recycling regulations, resource conservation needs and an increas ed awareness of the state of the environment by both the consumer and the producer, many companies are establishing disassembly plants and d eveloping product designs that specifically facilitate disassembly. On ce disassembled, the items can be reused, recycled or discarded. One c an identify two distinct aspects of the disassembly problem: design fo r disassembly (DFD) and planning for disassembly (PFD). The goal of DF D is to design products that are easy to disassemble. On the other han d, the objective of PFD is to identify efficient sequences to disassem ble products. This paper focuses on the PFD aspect of disassembly. Bec ause there could be many ways to disassemble a given product, PFD know ledge is accumulated by experience. Such knowledge is valuable, and sh ould be captured, saved and reused to solve similar problems that aris e in the future. In this paper, we propose case-based reasoning (CBR) as an approach to solve PFD problems. CBR is based on the fundamental principle that problem solving can benefit from solutions to past prob lems that have been attempted. The technique and issues related to the application of CBR to PFD are presented.