Diseño de un modelo de distribución de planta para un centro de gestión de residuos de aparatos eléctricos y electrónicos. Caso de estudio cantón Cuenca-Ecuador

Abstract

Circular Economy aims to decouple economic growth from the use of resources by the reduction and recirculation of natural resources. To achieve this the deployment of demanufacturing facilities is vital; they support the reuse, reparation, repurposing, remanufacturing, and/or recycling. Demanufacturing plants face changing conditions such as the variation of incoming materials, daily different production planning and control, between others. Plant Layout design for this unconventional type of setting poses several challenges as there are a great number of variables to be considered. Using simulation models, several alternatives can be evaluated in order to choose the design that best fits the necessities. The stochastic approach method can be used to solve a facility layout problem. Applying discrete events simulation, that allows to examine the probabilistic aspects that other methods could not recognize, would help to find the solution. This work presents a study case for a demanufacturing plant of Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment preprocessing (WEEE) for Cuenca-Ecuador. A simulation of discrete events has been applied in the Flexsim software; it has allowed the evaluation of two configurations with the aim of reducing time in order to obtain the optimal layout: manufacturing cells and disassembly line. The comparison has been done using the maximum and minimum demand for the plant. Several scenarios have been explored according to the production planning, the number of operators, the productivity, the utilisation, and the inactivity of the workforce and the workstations. For the analysed case considering the WEEE plant needs, the lay out with the best benefits have been given by work cells. This inference is due to the fact that a high productivity in processed kilograms per man-hour is obtained; also, adequate percentages of utilisation of workforce and workstations are achieved.