Distributed Planning in Product Recovery Networks

Summary

We consider a scenario, where a network of disassembly companies treats waste electronic equipment due to environmental regulation. Legal requirements like collection and recycling targets are formulated as network wide constraints of a network flow model. With regard to a distributed decision situation where a focal company with bounded knowledge coordinates activities of the disassembly network, fulfilment of these common constraints requires coordination. Assuming that the focal company’s aim is to maximise network wide profit, a decentralised problem formulation using Lagrangean relaxation is presented.

This work has been promoted by the German “Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft” (DFG). The authors would like to thank for the support