Sustainable design and manufacturing considers a product’s full life cycle and the impact that its design, manufacture, use, and retirement can have not only on business but also the environment and society. Designers are becoming steadily aware of this problem, and are employing techniques that allow them to design with greater responsibility – Sustainable Product Design; in particular, the Design for Disassembly (DFD) is recommended as a technique of sustainable product design. In the case of a durable good with a long-life cycle or a product with parts subject to wear, maintainability/serviceability may be more important than initial product acquisition cost, and the product must be designed for easy maintenance. The DFD principles identify the ease with which products can be fabricated, maintained, serviced, and recycled.
This paper examines and identifies a “Rating Chart” technique which can be used to evaluate DFD. It is demonstrated through a case study of underground escalator housing, in which different types of failure modes and defects occur in the major components of escalator drive systems, such as the motor and its drive chain system, handrail and its drive system, bearings/lubrication systems that are in adjunct with the bearing shaft assembly. Through the Rating Chart method proposed for DFD, the deficiency of the original design of escalator drive system was accessed and compared with the proposed sustainable design approach, in which the product maintainability can be significantly improved and the maintenance time can be greatly reduced. The paper concludes by showing the importance of sustainable product design for products working under extreme working conditions.
