Patent ID: 7877285

Claim:
A program storage device readable by a machine, tangibly embodying a program of instructions executable by a machine to perform method steps for workload planning for a demanufacturing process characterized by a plurality of customers each having unique customer specific requirements including demanufacturing complexity and critical operations, said method steps comprising: determining for each customer of a plurality of customers, a projected quantity of material for processing; determining from customer specific requirements a unique complexity factor for each customer for processing said material, including, dismantling prototype machines, identifying work content including identifying any critical operations and resulting saleable, commodity, and trash items, said unique complexity factor representing processing time divided by said projected quantity as initially defined during prototype dismantling and subsequently modified by actual experience; said critical operations including removal of sensitive parts to prevent disclosure of confidential information, recovery of parts needed to satisfy a shortage requirement for build of other products, removal of parts to prevent their re-use, and removal of parts and materials as required by a vendor commodity purchaser; applying said projected quantity and said unique complexity factors to a spreadsheet workload planning model for forecasting workload requirements for said processing; periodically updating said projected quantity and said critical operations; responsive to prior customer product shipment experience and new demanufacturing product prototyping, and responsive to updated projected quantity and updated critical operations, adjusting and applying to said spreadsheet workload planning model said unique complexity factor for each customer of said plurality of customers; and responsive to said projected quantity and said unique complexity factor, determining staffing requirements and productivity targets for processing said material at a plurality of future periods; determining said staffing requirements for each future period by summing staff requirements for all customers adjusted by expected absenteeism factor, fatigue factor, breaks requirements, and vacation patterns to create an adjusted staffing requirement for said demanufacturing enterprise.