Title: An AHP and PROMETHEE methods-based environment friendly heuristic for disassembly line balancing problems

Authors: Shwetank Avikal; P.K. Mishra; Rajeev Jain

Addresses: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Motilal Nehru National Institute of Technology, Allahabad, 211004, India ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, Motilal Nehru National Institute of Technology, Allahabad, 211004, India ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, Kalaniketan Polytechnic College Jabalpur 482001, India

Abstract: Disassembly activities take place in various recovery operations such as remanufacturing, recycling and disposal. Disassembly of used product is necessary because of their malign effects on environment. The problem of sequence generation in disassembly is complex and is difficult to solve. The optimal balance of a disassembly line is thorny because of its NP hard nature. Various heuristics, mathematical models and other solving techniques have been reported to solve such problems. In the present work, a new heuristic has been proposed to assign the parts to the disassembly work stations under precedence constraints. Analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and PROMETHEE methods have been incorporated in the proposed heuristic to prioritise the tasks for assignment. The methodology has been illustrated with a case example. It has been observed that the proposed heuristic is effective to generate viable solutions.

Keywords: disassembly line balancing; product disassembly; environmental effects; analytical hierarchy process; AHP; PROMETHEE; waste management; disassembly sequences; precedence constraints; task assignment.

DOI: 10.1504/IER.2013.054125

Interdisciplinary Environmental Review, 2013 Vol.14 No.1, pp.69 - 85

Received: 15 Jan 2013
Accepted: 05 Feb 2013
Published online: 30 Jun 2014 *

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