End-of-life aircraft treatment in the context of sustainable development, lean management, and global business

ABSTRACT

Dealing with retired aircraft taking into account the environmental, social, and economic impacts is emerging as an air transportation problem for the near future. The players involved in the problem wish to solve this challenge in a systematic way to benefit from the value extracted from the core activities of the end-of-life (EoL) aircraft treatment, decrease the environmental impacts, and at the same time maximize the social value. This paper proposes a holistic approach to EoL aircraft treatment considering lean management, sustainable development, and the global business environment. An integrated optimization framework is proposed to support decision-making at both the strategic and managerial levels. The flexibility of the framework makes it possible to compare different business models, dismantling strategies, and network structures that impact the efficiency, stability, and leanness of the recovery network. A solution methodology based on the joint application of fuzzy interactive approach and genetic algorithm is introduced. The application perspective and guidelines for pilot study are also provided. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that recovery of EoL aircraft is considered based on three aspects of sustainability, lean, and global business. Therefore, this study provides many promising perspectives in this context to enrich the literature of EoL aircraft as a new aviation industry challenge and opportunity.

KEYWORDS:

• End-of-Life (EoL) aircraft treatment
• integrated optimization framework
• global business
• lean management
• multi-objective optimization
• sustainable development

Acknowledgment

The authors would like to acknowledge funding from Bombardier Aerospace, NSERC, Bell Helicopter Textron, CRIAQ, Aluminerie Alouette, Sotrem-Maltech, BFI, Nano-Quebec and MITACS.

Notes

¹ United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) (2009), Guidelines for social life cycle assessment of products. Available at: http://www.unep.org/pdf/DTIE_PDFS/DTIx1164xPA-guidelines_sLCA.pdf

² https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/sustainability/publications/total-impact-measurement-management/assets/pwc-timm-report.pdf

³ ISO Environmental management—life cycle assessment—principles and framework (ISO 14040) ISO, Geneva (2006)

⁴ https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#iso:std:iso:22628:ed-1:v1:en