Balancing of two-sided disassembly lines: Problem definition, MILP model and genetic algorithm approach

Abstract

The recovery of end of life (EOL) products has become an important issue in terms of economic as well as social and environmental considerations. Recent rigid environmental regulations also contribute to the popularity of disassembly and product recovery topics among academicians and practitioners. Disassembly lines have been utilised to break EOL products into pieces and remove parts which can be reused in the manufacturing of new products. However, to the best of the authors' knowledge, there is no research on the two-sided disassembly lines, which are used for disassembly of large-sized products. Therefore, this research contributes to literature by introducing the two-sided disassembly line balancing problem (TDLBP) and modelling it mathematically for the first time. The problem is depicted and the challenges are explored through extensive numerical examples. Secondly, a powerful genetic algorithm approach, called 2-GA, is developed for solving the introduced TDLBP considering complex AND/OR precedence relations. Computational tests are conducted to test the performance of the proposed 2-GA and the results are compared to those obtained from CPLEX and tabu search algorithm. From the comparison of the obtained solutions, it can be concluded that 2-GA has a superior performance in finding optimal (or at least near-optimal) solutions usually within less than one second.