A Kano model, AHP and M-TOPSIS method-based technique for disassembly line balancing under fuzzy environment

Recovery, recycling or remanufacturing of post-consumed products are viable alternatives for reducing the environmental problems resulting from the huge amounts of waste currently arriving at landfills. Disassembly operations are inevitable for product recovery therefore the disassembly line is an appropriate choice to carry out the same. A disassembly line balancing problem is how to streamline the disassembly activities, so that the total disassembly time required at each workstation is approximately the same. The assignment of jobs to workstations in a disassembly environment has been the matter of concern to researchers because the product, which has to be disassembled, have different types of materials. The main aim of a disassembly process is to reuse components and reduce undesirable impact on the environment. This paper applies a Kano model, fuzzy-AHP, and M-TOPSIS-based technique, shown to successfully find the optimal order of component removal using AND/OR precedence relation. The tasks are assigned to the disassembly workstations according to their priority rank and precedence relations. The proposed technique has been illustrated with an example and the results show improvements in the performance in comparison with other techniques.