Decision evaluation process in end-of-life systems management

In manufacturing sectors, firms are paying an increasing attention to sustainability concept with regard to their end-of-life products in order to respect environmental norms and satisfy the consumer sensitivity. This practise allows creating value by reintroducing dismantling and recovering parts and/or materials of end-of-life products into manufacturing process, or into maintenance process. Thus, deconstruction processes are developed in order to examine all activities addressing the end of life (EOL) systems to ensure its disposal according to environmental constraints when seeking an economic optimum. In this context, one of the first tasks to perform is to repatriate the EOL systems at lowest cost considering geographical optimization of treatment centers. Considering this point, the present paper proposes an evaluation and optimization approach for the withdrawal location process in the field of aircraft dismantling. Given the multitude and heterogeneity of characteristics to be taken into account, we propose to consider dismantling site location problem as multi-criteria/multi-objectives decision making problem and solve it using a new AHP-BOCR approach based on qualitative and quantitative evaluations. A bipolar structuring framework is considered to distinguish positive and negative aspects in the elicitation/evaluation process to avoid compensation and satisficing game theory is used as suitable mathematical tool for recommendation process. An experimental study is carried out to show the usefulness of the framework. (C) 2015 The Society of Manufacturing Engineers. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.