A genetic algorithm for disassembly scheduling with assembly product structure

This paper considers a production planning problem in disassembly systems, which is the problem of determining the quantity and timing of disassembling used or end-of-life products in order to satisfy the demand of their parts or components over a finite planning horizon. We study the case of single product type without parts commonality, that is, assembly product structure. The objective is to minimize the sum of setup, disassembly operation, and inventory holding costs. A genetic algorithm is developed based on several properties of optimal solutions. Results of computational experiments on randomly generated test problems indicate that the genetic algorithm gives the optimal solutions up to all moderate-sized problems in a short amount of computation time (less than 1 minute).