A Constraint Programming Approach for Aircraft Disassembly Scheduling

The dismantling and recycling of aircrafts is one of the future challenges for the air transport industry in terms of sustainability. This problem is hard to solve and optimize as planning operations are highly constrained. Indeed, extracting each part requires technicians with the necessary qualifications and equipment. The parts to be extracted are constrained by precedence relations and the number of simultaneous technicians on specific zones is restricted. It is also essential to avoid unbalancing the aircraft during disassembly. Cost is a significant factor, influenced by the duration of ground mobilization and the choice of technicians for each operation. This paper presents a first constraint programming model for this problem using optional interval variables. This model is used to solve variations of a large instance involving up to 1500 tasks, based on real-life data provided by our industrial partner. The results show that the model can find feasible solutions for all variations of the instance and compares the solutions obtained to lower bounds.