Optimum production planning of a dedicated remanufacturing process by an integrated simulation‐based optimisation approach

In dedicated remanufacturing, required operations are outsourced to third party plants. The special characteristic of dedicated remanufacturing is the stochastic property of the system. Simulation is a reliable approach to tackle this property in planning of a remanufacturing plant. The planning process is categorised to three levels including: strategic, tactic and operational planning and various tactics are applied to address these planning levels. We have considered Palmer's method for scheduling the flow shop machines of the plant. A sophisticated approach is implemented to address value deterioration of the input products. We have used genetic algorithm in searching the decision space of the problem to find the best values of the control variables. This study presents a unique modelling approach for optimum production planning of dedicated manufacturing processes.