A Salp Swarm Algorithm for Parallel Disassembly Line Balancing Considering Workers With Government Benefits

Proper disassembly operations organization and workstation assignment can help increase the efficiency of disassembly systems that are critical for recycling and remanufacturing of end-of-life (EOL) products. A parallel disassembly system layout allows diversification of disassembly tasks and increases flexibility. In this work, a parallel disassembly balancing model considering hiring workers with government benefits (WGB) is established. To quickly find an optimal solution to the model, a salp swarm algorithm (SSA) with a new encoding and decoding process is developed. Moreover, we use the well-known mathematical optimization technique CPLEX to verify the correctness of the proposed model and use a genetic algorithm (GA), a constrained decomposition approach with grids’ optimization (CDG), and a random search (RS) algorithm to show the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm can perform well on the proposed problem, which is conducive to the society accepting more WGB into the workplace.