Product disassembly sequence planning: state-of-the-art, challenges, opportunities and future directions

Disassembly sequence planning (DSP) has gained active research interest since the 90s due to increasing environmental awareness and stricter regulations regarding end-of-life (EOL) strategies of used products. DSP is a subset of disassembly research that focuses on the systematic separation of constituent parts in a product. Despite tremendous efforts from researchers worldwide, DSP remains a challenging research area due to a variety of reasons, e.g. vast variety and complexity of products and uncertainties in the EOL conditions of products. Numerous survey papers have been published from time to time to offer up-to-date insights into this field. Researchers have continuously proposed new solutions to solve the DSP problem in tandem with the advancements in computing and the introduction of new concepts, such as virtual reality. This paper aims to provide a state-of-the-art survey of DSP research in the last 12 years. The research progress and achievements in DSP are summarised from three perspectives, namely, product representation models, sequencing algorithms and methodology validation. Lastly, the challenges and potential research directions in DSP are elaborated followed by conclusion.