Disassembly Support for Reuse of Mechanical Products Based on a Part Agent System

Abstract

To realize effective reuse of mechanical parts for the development of a sustainable society, it is essential to manage individual parts over their entire life cycle. Part agent system that supports maintenance of part and/or product using network agent and RFID technology has been developed to support reuse of products by giving users advices on replacement of products. We have reported the development of a function of part agent that supports disassembly of products. For that purpose, assembly model and disassembly process model relating to it were developed. Based on this information that is predefined and stored in a part agent of used product, the part agent shows the user the procedure how to disassemble an appropriate part from the product by displaying it using augmented reality. In this paper, a prototype system is proposed that supports disassembly of used products with improved function that deals with possible deterioration of parts. The paper shows a preliminary result of the experiment with the implemented system and discusses remaining issues.