Surendra M. Gupta, Ph.D., P.E., is a Professor of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering and theDirector of the Laboratory for Responsible Manufacturing, Northeastern University. He received his BEin Electronics Engineering from Birla Institute of Technology and Science, MBA from Bryant
University, and MSIE and Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering from Purdue University. He is a registeredprofessional engineer in the State of Massachusetts. Dr. Gupta’s research interests are in the areas ofProduction/Manufacturing Systems and Operations Research. He is mostly interested in
Environmentally Conscious Manufacturing, Reverse and Closed-Loop Supply Chains, Disassembly
Modeling and Remanufacturing. He has authored or coauthored well over 450 technical papers
published in books, journals and international conference proceedings. His publications have been citedby thousands of researchers all over the world in journals, proceedings, books, and dissertations. He has
traveled to all seven continents viz., Africa, Antarctica, Asia, Australia, Europe, North America andSouth America and presented his work at international conferences on six continents. Dr. Gupta hastaught over 100 courses in such areas as operations research, inventory theory, queuing theory,engineering economy, supply chain management, and production planning and control. Among themany recognitions received, he is the recipient of outstanding research award and outstanding industrial
engineering professor award (in recognition of teaching excellence) from Northeastern University as
well as a national outstanding doctoral dissertation advisor award.

Disassembly: A Comprehensive Overview
A recent focus on sustainability has its roots in the need of humans to maintain the current and future
economic profitability, environmental protection and quality of living standards. Preservation ofresources and reduction and elimination of waste, which are part of the mission of product recovery,
play an important role in sustainability. One of the most important elements of product recovery isdisassembly. Disassembly can be defined as the systematic separation of an assembly into its
components, subassemblies materials or other groupings. All product recovery options (viz., reuse,remanufacturing, recycling, and disposal) require some level of disassembly. Over the last decade,researchers have made great strides in identifying and understanding the various issues involved indisassembly. For example, topics such as scheduling, sequencing, line balancing, disassembly to ordersystems, ergonomics, and automation have become areas of active research. In addition, products
specifically designed to facilitate disassembly at the end of their lives have started to gain serious
attention. In addition to being environment friendly, effective management of disassembly operations
lead to higher profitability and lower costs. Disassembly operations have a strong impact on theelements of forward as well as reverse supply chains such as the storage spaces and transportation
capacity. This, in turn, have created many challenges in the areas of network design, transportation,
selection of used products, selection and evaluation of suppliers, performance measurement, marketing
related issues, end-of-life (EOL) alternative selection, remanufacturing and product acquisition
management, to name a few. This talk will present the evolution of disassembly together with an
overview of a variety of topics within disassembly and avenues for future research.