The method to assess the 'ease of disassembly' of products (eDIM) was developed in prior research and published as a JRC technical report in 2016 (Vanegas et al., 2016) and as a scientific paper in 2017 (Vanegas et al., 2017). eDIM was developed to evaluate the ability or ease with which components can be disassembled from products to facilitate repair, remanufacture and/or reuse. In a previous JRC technical report, a database of disassembly tasks was built based on the Maynard operation sequence technique (MOST) (Zandin, 2003), which provides values for elementary manual movements. The method was then tested on an LCD display case study. Results showed how the information about the disassembly sequence of a product (including types of fasteners and tools required) can be used on a spreadsheet to assess partial or complete disassembly, through the proposed ease of disassembly metric. The present study further develops the eDIM method and database, in particular based on feedback received from stakeholders on the previous technical report. The study also aims to demonstrate the applicability of the method on some sample notebook computers. Similarly to the first report, this study aims to provide scientific evidences for regarding the ease of disassembly, reparability and reusability, and to serve as basis for the potential development of standardised metrics. First of all, the report includes a review of available statistics about frequent failures of notebook computers. The most common notebook components reporting damages or breakages are, for example, batteries, keyboards, LCD screens and memory storage drives. Moreover, two Belgian facilities that reuse, repair and refurbish notebooks were visited and interviewed by the authors to obtain better insight into how enhanced component fastening could facilitate their processes. Furthermore, the study was complemented by laboratory experiments on the disassembly of some of the main components of a notebook, such as batteries, hard disk drive (HDD) or solid state drive (SSD), CD/DVD player, motherboard and LCD screen. The experiment was run on 39 sample notebooks produced between 2004 and 2011.
