Discrete Shuffled Frog Leading Algorithm for Multiple-product Human-robot Collaborative Disassembly Line Balancing Problem

With the rapid development of recycling and remanufacturing technologies, disassembly line balancing problems (DLBP) have drawn great attention. Considering the limitation of disassembly by humans or robots alone, this paper focuses on human-robot collaborative disassembly lines. Specifically, this work proposes a multi-product human-robot collaborative disassembly line balancing model to tackle the inflexibility of single product disassembly and inconsistency in recovery values of different product components. Its objective is to maximize disassembly profit. As a commercially available solver, IBM’s CPLEX is used to obtain the exact solution of DLBP and verify the correctness of the proposed mathematical model. A discrete shuffled frog leading algorithm is newly designed to solve the sizable problems. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm has a fast convergence rate and can find solutions consistent with those with CPLEX but requires much less time than the latter, thus advancing the field of disassembly automation.