Disassembly line balancing problem: a review of the state of the art and future directions

The disassembly line balancing (DLB) problem assigns the set of tasks to each workstation for each product to be disassembled and aims at attaining several objectives, such as minimising the number of workstations, ensuring similar idle time at each workstation and removing hazardous parts/highly demanded components at the earliest moments possible. Over the past two decades, the DLB problem and its variants have grown ever more popular for researchers and practitioners of environmentally conscious manufacturing. Yet, the problem characteristics and assumptions vary widely and there is no literature review to classify the existing articles accordingly. Hence, a comprehensive literature review of recent and state-of-the-art papers is vital to draw a framework of the past, and to shed light on future directions. To do so, 116 studies published in proceedings and journals since 1999 are selected and reviewed. The papers are then analysed and categorised to construct a useful foundation of past research. Finally, trends and gaps in the literature are identified to clarify and to suggest future research opportunities.