| This thesis explores sources of obstacles to remanufacturing, particularly those imposed by product design. Remanufacturing, or product recycling, addresses the negative environmental impacts from product disposal. Businesses may choose to remanufacture because of influences from ethics and legislation.; Effective design to facilitate remanufacturing requires technical knowledge of the design influence on remanufacturing feasibility. Examination of remanufacturers' waste streams yields empirical evidence of four types of obstacles: product-feature damage, process-execution problems, issues outside of the remanufacturing process, and unidentified problems. Additionally, root causes of the obstacles are surmised.; A preliminary reference for design for remanufacture, in the form of tables with root causes and obstacles cross-indexed, is presented. A designer can examine their own product for root causes and possible remanufacturing obstacles. For each table entry, the specific product studied and its proportion of waste stream that was affected by the discard reason are available for further reference. |
