Consumer Behavior Modeling in System Design for Ease-of-repair and Ease-of-return

摘要

Capturing uncertainties in consumer behavior can lead to better handling of sustainable design, manufacturing, and logistics operations throughout the entire life cycle of products. The sustainability decision-making problems such as managing end-of-use/life products acquisition, incorporating historical life cycle data into recovery planning, and characterizing the social, environmental, and economic outcome of adopting sustainable design strategies cannot be well investigated and understood without considering the behavioral decision-making of consumers.;Considering the role of consumers, we aim at designing an effective take-back program, estimating the reusability of disposed of consumer electronic devices, characterizing the environmental impact of design alternatives, and quantifying the value losses in the electronic waste recovery management systems. We have explored the consumers' usage, repair, and return behaviors; and shown that how these behaviors can be controlled and directed towards more effective resources consumption in a circular economy.;In this dissertation, to study the defined problems, we developed several data-driven and analytical models---including a probabilistic economic model, a life cycle assessment model with the stochastic inventory, and a game-theoretic model--- and provided the results.;In Chapters 3 and 4, a data set of rechargeable Lithium-ion laptop batteries and disposable household alkaline batteries has been studied with the aim of investigating the consumers' usage behavior and the potential reusability of End-of-Use batteries. In Chapter 3, the physical deterioration processes of Lithium-ion batteries have been profiled. Next, the consumers' usage behavior, or the way that they have used the batteries, has been captured. Finally, the consumers' behavior and the degradation processes have been incorporated into a probabilistic method to estimate the reusability, and investigate recovery economic of end-of-use/life batteries. We adopted a similar approach to characterize the reusability of disposable household alkaline batteries in Chapter 4, with the only difference being that another set of technical parameters such as voltage and internal resistance has been used.;In Chapters 5, 6, and 7, we aim at investigating consumers' repair behavior, discussing challenges and opportunities in the consumer electronics repair sector, and conceptualizing the design for ease-of-repair strategy. Surveying the repair experience of household and commercial users and repair technicians has been the main theme of Chapters 5 and 6. In Chapter 7, the impact of components' deterioration profiles and consumers' repair behavior on the lifespan of devices has been assessed in order to evaluate the ease-of-repair of a design scenario. A life cycle model has been developed to simulate consumer repair behavior and different design scenarios have been compared based on the associated environmental impacts.;In Chapter 8, a manufacturer---taking the responsibility of remanufacturing---launches a take-back program to acquire used products for remanufacturing activities. The consumer decision about when to return the unwanted products and manufacturer's decision for the amount of incentive offered to consumers are incorporated into a theoretic game framework. The optimal monetary incentive has been derived in the presence of heterogeneous and homogeneous consumers. The theoretical model of this chapter is grounded in the evidences from our previous empirical study.;In Chapters 9 and 10, we introduced the concept of 'Value Leakage' in e-waste recovery systems. In fact, we assessed the current practices of recovering e-waste and captured economic and material losses mainly due to the lack of repair, collection, and recycling infrastructure. In both chapters, material flow analysis has been used as a tool to support the analytical part of studies. Smart Phones and Hard Disk Drives have been selected as the case study in Chapters 9 and 10, respectively. Finally, Chapter 11 concluded the dissertation and provided a number of suggestions for future research.;The main findings of this dissertation can be summarized as follows: (1) Commercial consumers tend to store end-of-use/life computers for a longer time than household consumers; (2) socio-demographics, the brand image, and design characteristics are among factors which affect consumers' storage behavior; (3) optimal used products collection policies can be derived analytically by formulating remanufacturer-consumers interactions; (4) usefulness of repair guidelines, the complexity of repair, and the consumer willingness to repair have significant impact on the consumer loyalty to a brand; (5) Globally, 4104.7 Mg is the amount of unrecovered Neodymium due to the incomplete re cycling of Hard Disk Drives; (6) the average remaining energy inside an disposed of AA alkaline battery is about 13% of its total energy; and (7) the remaining useful life of a Li-ion laptop battery can be quantified based on the degradation process and the consumers' usage behavior.