Supply-driven rebalancing of disassembly lines: A novel mathematical model approach

In recent years, the interest of disassembly line has increased owing to the economic reasons and increase of environmental awareness. The balancing of the disassembly line is one of the factors affecting directly the performance of the process. Companies with a line used effectively can gain many advantages in terms of economic aspect and it facilitates competition the companies with others. Moreover, uncertainties end-of-life products characteristics and quantity of supply/demand causes reassigned of task and altering cycle time. Rebalancing of disassembly line is required in this situation. In this study, a novel mixed integer programming model is proposed. Firstly, disassembly line balance is created, and then according to the given new supply, tasks are reselected and reassigned to the workstations. A real case study is presented. The generated test problems are also analyzed using proposed mathematical model. Through the analysis of rebalancing the existing disassembly line, it has been identified that an existing balance might have been changed to accommodate changes in the desired output rate in order to cope up with the variation of the cycle time.