Solving Disassembly and Assembly Line Balancing Problem with Robot Direction Switching

As the manufacturing industry advances, efficient waste recycling has become a key focus in disassembly and assembly line problems. This work presents a disassembly and assembly line balancing problem (DALBP) that incorporates the switching time of the robot's operation direction. Unlike traditional disassembly lines balancing problem, the proposed model can enhance production efficiency from both lines. A single-object programming model is developed to optimize the switching time of robot operation. An improved Q-lambda (IQ(λ)) reinforcement learning algorithm is proposed to solve it since it is NP-hard. After comparing its results with those of the exact solver and other intelligent optimization methods in four cases, we conclude its competitive performance in both solution quality and efficiency.