Scheduling in a three-stage remanufacturing system with machine blockage, deterioration and maintenance using metaheuristic algorithm

Remanufacturing plays a significant role in sustainable development. A complete remanufacturing process integrates three stages: disassembly, reprocessing, and reassembly. To bring the problem closer to real-world scenarios, this study proposes a scheduling problem for three-stage remanufacturing system considering machine blockage, deterioration and maintenance. Rate-modifying activity (RMA), as a type of maintenance activity, is executed to address the time-dependent deterioration. To solve this problem, first, a new deterioration model with RMAs is proposed to estimate the actual reprocessing time and determine the strategy for RMA execution. Second, a new blocking scheduling model is established to minimize the makespan. To find satisfactory solutions in a reasonable time, a new metaheuristic called modified monarch butterfly optimization (MMBO) algorithm is proposed. In MMBO algorithm, a problem-specific constructive heuristic and a new machine load balancing strategy are proposed to generate high-quality initial solutions. Then, two improved operators, adaptive to the solution representation scheme, are designed for exploring the solution space. Finally, experiments and comparison with state-of-the-art algorithms are made to demonstrate the effectiveness and superiority of the MMBO algorithm for this problem.