Evaluating the role of product design and process time variability in determining a configuration of disassembly stations

The depletion of natural resources has necessitated a better management of resources. One of the methods in this regard has been the reuse of materials and parts from products at the end of their life cycles, which requires a suitable configuration of disassembly systems for an effective operation. In this paper, we compare performances of two types of system configurations: standalone tear-down-stations and disassembly lines. These system configurations are tested for the disassembly of class 8 trucks to recover parts, which are then remanufactured or refurbished for reuse. A key feature of this product, and that of a used product in general that is disassembled, is the uncertainty of the processing time of a disassembly step. This uncertainty can lead to difficulties in proper line balancing, bottlenecks, inefficient use of resources, and generally, reduced throughput. In order to overcome these limitations, in this paper, we investigate the above disassembly facility configurations, and determine how their performances are affected by variability in operation times.