Cyclic lot scheduling with sequence-dependent set-ups: a heuristic for disassembly processes

The importance of material and product recovery is steadily increasing, mainly due to customer expectations and take-back obligations. Disassembly is a major operation in material and product recovery, since returned products are often disassembled to separate materials and components. The paper considers the problem of scheduling several items on a single disassembly facility. It develops a cyclic lot-scheduling heuristic for disassembly processes with sequence-dependent set-ups, resulting in disassembly frequencies for the items. Additionally, the way the problem is formulated allows calculation of the profitable use of the facility. The disassembly frequencies and the profitable use of the facility are used to create a cyclic schedule.