Mathematical formulation and an improved moth-flame optimization algorithm for parallel two-sided disassembly line balancing based on fixed common stations

Abstract

Nowadays, rapid product iterations result in large quantities of end-of-life products. To meet the fast-growing demand for remanufacturing engineering, companies have quickened the standardization and industrialization of waste dissembling. Two-sided disassembly lines can effectively disassemble large-sized products on both sides of the lines, and parallel disassembly lines can disassemble multiple products simultaneously with fewer workstations and higher production efficiency. Combining the two types of disassembly can effectively increase the disassembly efficiency of large-sized products. However, the parallel two-sided disassembly line has not been fully investigated because of the essential complexity of the problem. Therefore, this research introduced the parallel two-sided disassembly line balancing problem with fixed common stations. First, a multi-objective mixed-integer programming model is established to solve the problem for the first time. The model is proved to be correct through small-scale numerical examples. Second, a multi-objective improved moth-flame optimization algorithm is implemented to solve the proposed large-scale problems. The proposed algorithm employs a two-phase decoding approach to design the scheme and a discrete moth for fire operation to search and replace new individuals, and then a restart strategy is introduced to reduce the probability of the population falling into a local optimum. Finally, the algorithm solved extensive disassembly line balancing problems with different layouts, including the straight-line, two-sided, and parallel two-sided, and case studies demonstrated the reliability and validity of the proposed method.