Further development of the Disassembly Map, a method to guide product design for disassembly

The Disassembly Map is a modelling method which allows to visually represent the architecture of a product, describing disassembly precedence and dependencies of components and operations necessary for their complete non-destructive removal. It introduced new standard visual elements to communicate the influence of specific design features on disassembly tools, sequences and time. A first iteration of this method was created during a study focused on a single product group, vacuum cleaners [1]. This paper presents a further development, meant to improve its versatility for application in diverse product groups. This was developed and tested by analysing four products (pressurized steam generator, coffee maker, child car seat and washing machine). This study shows the versatility of the Disassembly Map and introduces a new coding of action blocks, that allows the representation of a more extensive range of disassembly actions.