Abstract
Recoverable product environments are part of strategies to increase product life and prevention of waste through repair, remanufacturing and recycling of products. Remanufacturing systems are faced with a greater degree of uncertainty and complexity than traditional new manufacturing systems, leading to the need for planning and control systems designed to deal with the added uncertainty and complexity. Two key activities in planning and controlling, disassembly release mechanisms (DRM) and priority dispatching rules (PDR) are examined via a simulation model. The results indicate that simple due-date-based priority dispatching rules generally perform well for a variety of performance measures. Disassembly release mechanisms had very little impact and as a result practicing managers should favor the simplest to implement and manage mechanisms.