Facility location planning for treatment of large household appliances in Spain

Abstract

A two-step approach is presented for strategic planning of recycling systems for discarded electronic products. In a first step, the appropriateness of municipalities for the installation of recycling facilities is evaluated based on economic, infrastructural, and legal location criteria applying a Multi-Attribute Decision-Making procedure (PROMETHEE). In a second step, interdependencies of pre-selected locations are taken into account applying a Warehouse Location Model in order to determine an optimal recycling system with several locations. The approach is applied to a case study of recycling large household appliances in Spain. Recommendations for installation and operation of the recycling system are derived. Copyright © 2008 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.