A balancing method of mixed-model disassembly line in random working environment

Abstract

Disassembly is a necessary link in reverse supply chain and plays a significant role in green manufacturing and sustainable development. However, the mixed-model disassembly of multiple types of retired mechanical products is hard to be implemented by random influence factors such as service time of retired products, degree of wear and tear, proficiency level of workers and structural differences between products in the actual production process. Therefore, this paper presented a balancing method of mixed-model disassembly line in a random working environment. The random influence of structure similarity of multiple products on the disassembly line balance was considered and the workstation number, load balancing index, prior disassembly of high demand parts and cost minimization of invalid operations were taken as targets for the balancing model establishment of the mixed-model disassembly line. An improved algorithm, adaptive simulated annealing genetic algorithm (ASAGA), was adopted to solve the balancing model and the local and global optimization ability were enhanced obviously. Finally, we took the mixed-model disassembly of multi-engine products as an example and verified the practicability and effectiveness of the proposed model and algorithm through comparison with genetic algorithm (GA) and simulated annealing algorithm (SA).