Optimising end-of-life system dismantling strategy

The management of end-of-life systems is becoming a major concern for systems manufacturers, as the negative impact of these systems on the environment is a matter of increasing public awareness, and their appropriate treatment offers economic opportunities. In this context, the disassembly of these systems in order to recycle their components is a possible and sound option that can make it possible to sustain economical progress while respecting environment requirements. The work undertaken in this paper considers modelling and optimising issues of such disassembly activities. An integrated approach is proposed to model and optimise the selection of valuable components of end-of-life systems, their recycling options and the way to obtain them. Because the framework of such problems is highly uncertain, we propose the use of Bayesian networks and their extension in terms of influence diagrams as mathematical tools for structuring and managing uncertainties. With this approach, one can take into account uncertainties rising from different sources on one hand and as a support for optimisation on the other hand.