Game theory-oriented approach for disassembly line worker assignment and balancing problem with multi-manned workstations

Multi-manned workstations, where a worker team synchronously executes different operations on the same product, have the potential to increase disassembly line performance. Despite focusing on main objectives such as workload imbalance and worker performance, existing disassembly line balancing studies have not addressed worker satisfaction. This study addresses the disassembly line worker assignment and balancing problem by considering not only multi-manned workstations with heterogeneous workers, but also workers' preference and performance. A novel multi-objective mixed integer linear programming model is formulated with the following objectives: minimizing the number of workers, the number of workstations, workload imbalance, maximizing worker satisfaction, and worker performance. Moreover, this study is proposing heuristics to utilize game theory-oriented approaches in the context of the addressed problem. Some comparative studies were carried out to compare the performance of the proposed heuristics. The effects of the factors were revealed by the statistical analysis conducted on the solutions for newly generated test problems. After the superiority of the proposed heuristics was indicated through comparative studies, they were applied to a washing machine disassembly system in the waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) industry. The application indicated the performance improvement for the disassembly lead time (65%) and the space requirement (64%) compared to a classical disassembly system design.