A replacement consideration for the end-of-life product in the green life cycle environment

With the rapid development of electronics and semiconductor technology, the life cycle of personal computers is getting shorter. The design and development of such products has become a regular and necessary routine. Because of this trend, it is often the case that users need to upgrade their computers after a certain period of time to cope with problems that can't be handled with a less powerful machine. It is therefore urgent to reduce the upgrade expense and to save resources. To solve the problem, this study employs the economic benefit analysis of disassembling personal computers to reduce the cost of product upgrading and to help protect the environment and save resources. In the study, the authors first work out the total economic benefit analysis flow. Then, with product depreciation as the core concept, an algorithm is proposed. With the use of computer programming, the product salvage is calculated through the preliminary product database. In the interactive interface, suggestions for computer upgrade were provided for the users. Finally, personal computers are used as an example to illustrate the economic benefit analysis model.