Tabu Search for Disassembly Line Balancing with Multiple Objectives

Abstract: The best choice for large scale disassembly processing is a disassembly line. In this paper, we consider a disassembly line balancing problem (DLBP) with multiple objectives that requires the assignment of disassembly tasks to a set of ordered disassembly workstations while satisfying the disassembly precedence constraints and optimizing the effectiveness of several measures. The four objectives to be achieved are: (1) minimize the number of disassembly workstations, (2) minimize the total idle time of all workstations by ensuring similar idle time at each workstation, (3) maximize the priority of removing hazardous components as early as possible in the disassembly sequence and (4) maximize the priority of removing high demand components before low demand components. Since the complexity of DLBP increases with the number of parts in the product, it is extremely crucial that an efficient methodology be developed. A new approach based on the tabu search (TS) algorithm is proposed to solve the DLBP. A case example is considered to demonstrate the functionality of the algorithm.