Abstract
The rapid changes in industry during the past decade, have started to greatly affect the manufacturing environment and production facilities. Traditional production facilities are being replaced by smart factories that are based on high technological aspects using smart machines to produce smart products. Due to the shortening of products life cycle, the need for a rapid design process has become an emerging issue.
However, the rapid design process is not the only challenge but also, speed and efficiency of the assembly process, after sale services and disassembly operations. Thus, design for disassembly has become an important sub-topic for the design process. As a result, product designers are now concerned with designing products that can be disassembled easily to avoid destructive separation of products, in order to minimize waste and scrap of products at their end of life. This can be done by allowing recovery of reusable components and materials so that they can be used in later generations of products, remanufacturing or recycling processes.
Design for disassembly offers different disassembly techniques that can facilitate the disassembly process greatly. Active disassembly is considered as one of the most important disassembly techniques. This is due to the fact; active disassembly can provide a more generic solution for most of disassembly problems as well be discussed in the present research. As a result, the present research aims to present an overview of design for disassembly discussing its different techniques with emphasis on active disassembly focusing on its importance and advances in detail.