Modelling and evaluating product end-of-life options

The paper focuses on the modelling and evaluating product end-of-life options, which is the problem of representing products and determining disassembly sequences with the objective of maximizing revenue. For the problem considered here, three algorithms were developed. The first is the algorithm to generate the product recovery graph semi-automatically for a given product liaison graph. Then, using the generated product recovery graph, another algorithm is developed to obtain optimal disassembly plans that maximize revenue. This algorithm is based on the backward calculation so that the hyperedges of the recovery graph are visited only once. Finally, to cope with uncertainties of the end-of-life products, a recovery graph questioning algorithm is suggested to find the margin of allowed revenue reduction of a given target edge that maintains the same optimal plan. Application of the three algorithms is illustrated using an example.