Integrated planning of electronic scrap disassembly and bulk recycling

The development of cost-efficient recovery concepts for discarded electronic products can be supported by the detailed analysis of material flows. This paper presents a sophisticated operations research model for integrated disassembly and bulk recycling planning problems. In a project that was carried out with a major German electronic scrap recycling enterprise, the daily program of recovered products and recovery operations had to be determined by a cost-efficient recycling program. The program takes into account the restrictions given by personnel, unit and market capacities including the consideration of the following problems: What discarded products should be chosen for treatment? · What level of disassembly should be chosen? Which scrap types should be treated in the internal bulk recycling facilities? What should be marketed externally? Based on the analysis of the material flows throughout the recycling enterprise regarding acquisition, disassembly and bulk recycling, a mixed-integer-linear-programming (MILP) model for integrated disassembly and bulk recycling planning problems has been developed, implemented and solved. As a conclusion, the innovative model provides practicable decision support for integrated recovery facilities. Compared with basic programs, an improvement of at least 10% concerning the total achievable marginal income can be obtained.