Disassembly-to-order system using Linear Physical Programming

One of the most responsible ways of processing end-of-life (EOL) products is to minimize their disposal to landfills by reusing, remanufacturing and/or recycling them. Often, this necessitates a certain level of disassembly. It is therefore necessary to plan disassembly processing efficiently so as to minimize costs and the amount of disposal as well as to maximize reuse, remanufacturing and recycling. In this paper, we present a disassembly-to-order system to determine the number of EOL products to process to fulfill a certain demand for products, parts and/or materials under a variety of objectives and constraints using a newly developed decision tool, called Linear Physical Programming. It addresses problems involving multiple objectives and constraints and allows the decision maker to express his/her value-system in a realistic manner for each objective of interest. The model also provides the number of items to be disassembled for remanufacturing, recycling, storage and disposal. A case example is also presented.