Inventory balancing of post-usage components of a disassembly line

• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2047/d10013532

In recent years, disassembly has gained a lot of attention due to its role in efficiently recovering valuable materials, parts, and subassemblies from end of life (EOL) products. This is due to the rigid environmental legislation, the economical and environmental benefits from reusing primary materials instead of virgin resources and the increase in environmental awareness and concerns of the consumers. However, the practice of recovering components and materials is challenging, as there are many associated complications that are unique to the disassembly process such as monitoring and controlling the inventory of core products and disassembled parts and the ability to satisfy demand from on hand inventory. Due to the disparity between demands for parts and their yields, there are many inventory problems that arise during the disassembly line balancing process. In this paper, we address the balancing of the inventories generated at various workstations of a so called balanced disassembly line.