Large-scale disassembly operations planning with parallel resources

Disassembly systems obtain valuable parts from end-of-life products to remanufacture, reuse, or recycle them. This study deals with disassembly scheduling and presents a novel mixed integer programming model. Disassembly scheduling is the problem of determining quantity and schedule of items disassembled, held in inventory, sold, and disposed on capacitated resources over a planning horizon while satisfying at least a given service level. The model presented here includes a number of novelties including assignment of disassembly operations to parallel capacitated resources, consideration of costs to environment and demand for each level of items. We also present a problem testbed to be used for comparison of different algorithms and the generation mechanism. Results from a large experimental design using problem testbed are presented.